As Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel hit cinema screens in Budapest, Corinthia’s grande dame hotel in the city basked in the publicity it earned through its similarity to the film’s setting. Victor Aquilina shares his sneak peak of the storyline and knowledge of the hotel’s history.

Most people staying in grand hotels hardly care about their history, and in any case many sporting the word ‘grand’ in their names are only grand in their opulence and service. But some have a story to tell.

It may be real, or fictitious, as in the one told in Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel, but both can be fascinating and entertaining.

Anderson’s comedy-drama is engaging and even thrilling at times, but Corinthia’s hotel in Budapest has quite an intriguing story, too.

The chain has a particular interest in the film as, in its view, the hotel used in the story is similar to its hotel in Elizabeth Ring in the Hungarian capital, first opened in 1896 as the Grand Hotel Royal.

The similarity is not just in name but in the façade as well. The Budapest Times seems to agree, though it admits there are other hotels claiming to be the model for the film.

But who blames Corinthia for exploiting the link?

The director has denied having any of the hotels in mind when making the film, or that Budapest is indeed the location used, but, again, the similarity is a nice twist that makes it even more interesting for those in the hotel industry or people in any way connected to the Corinthia.

The hotel in the story is located in an imaginary country called Zubrowka, somewhere in an alpine region.

It is unlikely anyone would remember the name of the location by the time the film ends and it is not important either, but the storyline is enthralling.

It is about Gustave, a domineering yet lovable concierge who leads the Grand Budapest Hotel with panache – in more sense than one, for he fastidiously never fails to wear his favourite musk, l’Air De Panache.

He takes under his wing a bellboy who has not made the grade in his studies and has no family, which is why he calls him Zero.

Debonair and authoritative Gustave attracts ageing blondes and one, Madame D, bequeaths him a valuable painting, Boy with Apple.

But when Madame D is found dead, Gustave is accused of her murder and in no time he finds himself in prison, but insists the hotel has to be run as though he were still there.

Ralph Fiennes is admirable as Gustave, though his use of “darling” does not always ring well.

For example, when Zero poig-nantly explains why he has no relatives. Gustave apologises profusely for the insensitivity he showed when writing “Zero” for his second name.

Gustave seems larger than life, but concierges do play a significant role in hotels.

They have to know the job inside out as guests come up with requests that are far from easy to meet.

Tamas Ungar, who wears his ‘keys’ with pride, has been in the job at the Corinthia’s hotel in Budapest long enough to write a book about some of the strange requests he has received.

The Lumière film-making brothers held their first cinematographic screening outside Paris at the Grand Hotel Royal

One example is a young man who asked him how best to propose to his girlfriend and another is a pregnant woman who wished to fly to London to give birth in a hospital there.

Apparently, money was no object and Tamas managed to get her on a private jet in no time.

Duty manager Tibor Meskal, who has been with the Grand Hotel Royal for many years, speaks passionately of its glorious past, pointing out the time when the Lumière film-making brothers held their first cinematographic screening outside Paris there.

In 1915, the hotel’s grand ballroom was turned into a cinema, the Royal Apollo, seating 1,000 people.

In his account of the hotel, Andreas Augustin asks rhetorically: “Was it the appearance of the first Lumière productions at the Royal that put a stamp on the hotel as the ‘cinema hotel’, as the haunt of movie stars?”

Today, the hotel still keeps this past connection to the film industry alive.

When it pre-premiered The Grand Budapest Hotel last month, general manager Thomas M. Fischer brought back memories of the Royal’s movie theatre days.

The ballroom is the only part of the old hotel that has been left intact, and it is so grand that it would have been sad had it been pulled down.

Bela Bartok, considered by the New York Times as the chief and most representative Hungarian composer of his epoch, held more than one concert there.

The hotel had its turbulent times, too, and in 1915 its breakfast room “functioned as an illegal marketplace for different agents”.

When the Hungarians rose against the communist regime in 1956, a group of the insurgency organisers used the hotel as a meeting place.

One morning Soviet tanks rolled into the front of the hotel and opened fire, killing all the insurgents and destroying the building. The hotel was rebuilt but the place fell far short of the grandness of the first Royal.

When Corinthia took over, it restored the building to its former glory, turning it into a landmark once again.