John G. Blystone

Zubrowka, the film tells us, was "once the seat of an empire," and so "The Grand Budapest Hotel" harks to the first decade or so of sound cinema, an era of Hollywood comedies, romances and musicals set in quaint and elaborate mythical or Americanized European countries; sample titles include Rouben Mamoulian's "Love Me Tonight" (1932), "Swiss Miss" (1938) with Laurel and Hardy, and such operetta-inspired Ernst Lubitsch productions as "The Smiling Lieutenant" and "The Merry Widow."