Influence on Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson’s film, The Grand Budapest Hotel is clearly inspired and heavily influenced by the writings of Stefan Zweig. The setting of a Grand Hotel is something already that is a clear reference or similarity between the two texts.  The time period also feels very similar in the two texts, around the in-between war eras. But beyond the obvious and superficial, there is much that is similar between The Grand Budapest Hotel and the writings of Stefan Zweig, specifically the novella Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman.

Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman is several stories within a story. We must follow the main story of the narrator that we are introduced to, but then the narrator shifts to Mrs. C as she tells her story. The same thing happens in The Grand Budapest Hotel. We are introduced to a narrator, which then shifts to a different narrator. When Zero tells his story about his life and his interaction with Mr. Gustave, he becomes the narrator. This is a pretty common literary technique so it may night be a direct influence. I don’t know when Wes Anderson started reading Zweig’s works and I don’t know how that whole timeline of when he made these movies plays out so it could be a situation of finding a fellow artist or author who speaks to you because of your similarities.

Mr. Gustave as a character also feels like he fits in perfectly in the world of Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman. He could easily be the enchanting stranger who whisks away Henriette. He is an idealized man, something mysterious and perfect in every situation. Mr. Gustave is flawed but always exudes this mystery and sense of perfection, and perhaps this is because his personification is through the perception of Zero, who looked up to the man.

I think this idealization of characters and situations is also something that is a common thread between the two texts. Both of them have a surreal-ness to them. The language is not necessarily how people would talk. The situations and characters are exaggerated and theatrical in a way that is verging on not realistic. In fact, at least in Wes Anderson’s films, none of the places he uses are real. I mentioned that he uses a similar time period, where it’s in between wars. But in Grand Budapest Hotel, the soldiers that attack him aren’t “Nazis”. It’s nonspecific for a reason. It continues this sense of “story” that everything is falsified in a way or exaggerated.

I would have to read more of Zweig’s work, but I think that the influence on Wes Anderson stylistically is clear. They both create similar types of characters and characterize them in similar ways. They nest stories within stories and they place their texts in similar time periods and locations. Not to say that Wes Anderson isn’t original, because we are all a mix of our influences and every work is a melding of influences that came before it.