The Grand Budapest Hotel hidden details worth a second look
The Grand Budapest Hotel hidden details begin with the shape of the screen, which changes depending on when the story is set. The Grand Budapest Hotel hidden details also include a painting made for the film, a hotel built in an old department store and models small enough to sit on a table.
Wes Anderson's 2014 film stars Ralph Fiennes as the concierge M. Gustave and Tony Revolori as Zero, his lobby boy, in the fictional country of Zubrowka. It won four Oscars, for score, production design, makeup and costume design.
The Grand Budapest Hotel hidden details: the frame
Anderson used three aspect ratios, one for each timeline.
- 1932, the hotel's heyday: the near-square 1.37:1 Academy ratio
- 1968, when old Zero tells his story: wide 2.40:1, shot with anamorphic lenses
- The present day: 1.85:1
The hotel is a department store
Filming took place in eastern Germany between January and March 2013. The grand lobby was built inside the Görlitzer Warenhaus, a vacant department store in Görlitz whose atrium became the hotel's interior. Other scenes used locations in and around Dresden.
Miniatures and a fictional country
Many exterior shots use models. The crew built three: a forest at one-eighth scale, an observatory at one-twelfth and the hotel itself at one-eighteenth, standing around three metres tall. Zubrowka, with its mountain resort, is invented, which let Anderson mix real European history with a storybook setting.
Many shots that look like real mountain landscapes are in fact these tabletop sets, filmed with the same care as the live-action scenes.
Boy with Apple was painted for the film
The priceless painting at the centre of the plot is not a real Old Master. English painter Michael Taylor spent about four months on it, drawing on Renaissance portraits, with actor Ed Munro posing as the boy. A Görlitz pastry chef helped create Mendl's signature courtesan au chocolat.
The Stefan Zweig connection
Anderson credited the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig as an inspiration, particularly Beware of Pity, The World of Yesterday and The Post Office Girl. Zweig's nostalgia for a vanished Europe runs through the film, whose story is framed as a memory of a memory, passed from Zero to an author to a reader.
The large cast is another detail fans enjoy spotting, with Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson all appearing.
The aspect ratio changes are easy to miss on a first watch but they guide the audience through the nested story. When the screen is nearly square, you are in Gustave's world of 1932. When it stretches wide, you are in the faded 1968 hotel, where old Zero, played by F. Murray Abraham, tells his story to the young author.
The miniatures are another quiet joke. Anderson could have used digital effects for the hotel's exterior and the cable car scenes, but the models give the film its handmade, toy-like look. The largest, the hotel at one-eighteenth scale, was big enough to light and shoot like a real building.
The film received nine Oscar nominations in total and won four, an unusually strong result for a comedy. Its production design win went largely to the detail described here: the department store lobby, the models and the painted props.
Questions people ask
Why does the aspect ratio change in The Grand Budapest Hotel?
Each ratio marks a timeline: 1.37:1 for 1932, 2.40:1 for 1968 and 1.85:1 for the present.
Where was The Grand Budapest Hotel filmed?
In eastern Germany, with the lobby built inside a former department store in Görlitz.
Is Boy with Apple a real painting?
No. Michael Taylor painted it for the film over about four months.
How many Oscars did The Grand Budapest Hotel win?
Four, for original score, production design, makeup and hairstyling, and costume design, from nine nominations.