Can you please explain me, what kind of messages he is constanly waiting for?
Should we presume that he's just kinda nervously waiting for something capable of putting the end to his ecclesiastic ruminations?
You are partly correct, I think.
Dr. Otternschlag's first and final words of the film " People come and people go, nothing ever happens", provide us with a clue to his dilemma.
What he is clearly yearning for is to relive his previous life where we can assume that he was an important and a needed person. Where his actions would be required and would solve serious problems (in the war).
After British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was voted out of office, she used to say that she would watch the news and then would want to immediately call the Foreign Secretary only to realise that she was no longer the Prime Minister.
...so not being accustomed to the feeling of insignificancy he tried to ease his blinding pain by moving to the place which he thought is inhabited by significant people by default.
shareYes.
That is an additional point that most people would miss and I did not think of either.
To put it more simply, the doctor was just lonely. What he longed for was the days before his face was ruined. In one scene he indicates that he had been quite the lady's man at one time. No doubt he also at one time, before the war, had had a thriving private practice, which he was no longer able to maintain because of his rather gruesome looks. Thus he had to exist on the unexciting and low-paying (for an M.D.) job as a hotel doctor. He was just hoping to get a letter from anyone!
As I have stated on another thread, Lewis Stone stole the show from the bigger stars. When I think of Grand Hotel, I think first of of the doctor.
People come, people go. Nothing ever happens on IMDb Message Board.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
no doubt; he's great in this!
🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴
I never realized the doctor actually worked for the hotel! I've seen the picture maybe 7-8 times and I always thought he was retired and lived there, waiting for something to happen.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
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