MOVIES ABROAD: A Tycoon Named Use

The first-night hoopla at Munich's Gloria Palast was pure Hollywood—grunting cops wrestling with crowds, limousines bulging with black-tied men and mink-draped starlets. As for the movie, it was a blatant rehash of Grand Hotel (1932). It was, sneered the Süddeutsche Zeitung, "pretentious kitsch [trash], a perfection of mediocrity, apotheosis of the single-entendre. Everywhere the box-office sledge hammer. In short, a German film."

But judging from audience response, Gloria Film Co.'s Menschen in Hotel was a Kassenschlager (boxoffice hit). And to Gloria's greying, violet-eyed boss, Use ("Kuba") Kubaschewski, the payoff is all that...