The Last Laugh

Director: F.W. Murnau F.W. Murnau

Overview

F.W. Murnau's German silent classic The Last Laugh (Der Letze Mann) stars Emil Jannings as the doorman of a posh Berlin hotel. Fiercely proud of his job, Jannings comports himself like a general in his resplendent costume, and is treated like royalty by his friends and neighbors. The hotel's insensitive new manager, noting that Jannings seems winded after carrying several heavy pieces of luggage for a patron, decides that the old man is no longer up to his job. The manager demotes Jannings to men's washroom attendant, and the effect is disastrous on the man's prestige and self-esteem. Logically, the film should end on a note of tragedy, but Murnau (either because he was ordered to by the producers or because he just felt like it) adds a near-surrealistic coda, wherein Jannings, having suddenly inherited a fortune, returns to the hotel in triumph. The Last Laugh was a bold experiment for its time: a film told entirely visually, with no subtitles save for the semi-satirical explanation of the climax. In a sense, Karl Freund's camera is as much a "character" as anyone else, commenting upon Jannings' rise and fall via then-revolutionary camera angles, jarring movements and grotesque lens distortions. Many historians credit The Last Laugh as the vanguard of the "German invasion" of Hollywood during the mid- to late-1920s.

Product Details

Release Date:	11/14/2017
UPC:	0738329215453
Original Release:	1924
Rating:	NR
Source:	Kino Classics
Region Code:	A
Time:	1:30:00

Special Features

New musical score (2017) by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra, Sheldon Mirowitz, Artistic Director; Original 1925 score by Giuseppe Becce, orchestrated by Detlev Glanert (2003); Audio Commentary by film historian Noah Isenberg; "The Last Laugh: The Making Of," A 40-minute documentary; Bonus DVD featuring the unrestored export version with music by Timothy Brock, performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Emil Jannings	The doorman
Kurt Hiller	The Daughter's Fiance
Emelie Kurtz	His Aunt
Hans Unterkirchen	Hotel manager
Emmy Wyde	Thin Neighbor
Maly Delschaft	The doorman's niece
Max Hiller	Her bridegroom
Olaf Storm	Young Guest
Hermann Vallentin	Guest with pointed belly
Georg John	Night Watchman

Technical Credits

Carl Mayer

F.W. Murnau	Director
Robert Baberske	Cinematographer
Giuseppe Becce	Score Composer
Karl W. Freund	Cinematographer
Robert Herlth	Art Director,Production Designer
Carl Mayer	Screenwriter
Erich Pommer	Producer
Walter Röhrig	Art Director,Production Designer
Edgar G. Ulmer	Production Designer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- The Last Laugh
1. Opening Titles [:35]
2. The Atlantic [:35]
3. Tenement Life [5:54]
4. Daybreak [2:21]
5. Demotion [7:23]
6. Defrocked [6:00]
7. The Theft [5:49]
8. The Wedding [4:41]
9. The Dream [4:03]
10. Reality [4:14]
11. The Depths [5:41]
12. Prying Eyes [5:48]
13. The Ugly Truth [5:14]
14. The Darkest Hour [9:46]
15. The Last Laugh [4:39]
16. Big Spender [5:33]
17. The New Man [3:33]
18. Grand Exit [3:58]
19. Chapter 19 [2:27]

Menu

Disc #1 -- The Last Laugh
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Editorial Reviews

One of the most significant silent films, The Last Laugh (1924) remains less talked about than director F. W. Murnau's justifiably heralded masterworks, Nosferatu(1922) and Sunrise (1927). One hopes this new DVD helps establish The Last Laugh's reputation as one of cinema's most formally successful expressionist dramas. Within its first few minutes, Murnau sets up a complex geometric structure, with motion occurring amid planes as a door revolves. The man behind the door is the Porter (Emil Jannings), an elderly man devoted to his work and, even more so, to his uniform. A demotion to semi-retirement as a men's room attendant crushes him. Murnau's gambit of foregoing inter-titles and telling the story strictly through images (indeed a rarity among silent films) is remarkably effective. Sympathizing with the Porter requires taking the film's premise in psychological, rather than literal, terms. One has to recognize that his uniform's loss raises all kinds of anxieties -- about downward mobility, aging, and virility -- that would seem far out of proportion to the event's actual significance. It succeeds completely at envisioning a cityscape from the perspective of a man in the throes of severe depression. Murnau's camera work is often unabashedly subjective, using funhouse-mirror effects to capture the threatening atmosphere that the Porter perceives. Yet it is also able to maintain its distance. More often than not, Murnau keeps his camera away from the characters: The scene in which the Porter reads his letter of dismissal, for instance, is held in long shot for an agonizing amount of time. If not for the mild chill of distance, the film would probably be unbearably melodramatic. But even as the film demands sympathetic indulgence from viewers, Murnau's visual brilliance makes the effort worthwhile. -- Steve Erickson

Barnes & Noble

Hailed at the time of its release as the finest film ever made, Der Letzte Mann wowed domestic and international audiences with its stunning technical and stylistic innovation. Concerning the downward spiral of a proud hotel doorman who becomes a lowly bathroom attendant, the film captures the shame and humiliation felt by the German people in the aftermath of their World War I defeat, artfully fusing gritty social realism with the sort of expressionistic visual style found in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). When the doorman is stripped of his military-like uniform, this once proud and erect figure seems slumped and broken. Brought to life by Emil Jannings's once-in-a-lifetime performance, the defrocked Doorman clings to the walls as if the weight of his disgrace threatens to crush him. His almost fetishistic attachment to his uniform both mirrored Germany's longing for order after its forced, post-WWI disarmament and eerily presaged its slide into Nazism. Yet what proved to be the most influential aspect of this film was director F. W. Murnau's striking visual style. What cinematographer Karl Freund dubbed the "unchained camera" was strikingly mobile for its time, starting with the opening shot, in which the camera descends to a hotel lobby in an elevator and is then propelled through the room towards a revolving door and the protagonist. Murnau's and Freund's inventive camerawork broadened cinema's emotional palette. Never before had a film so penetrated the individual psyche of an individual character in the context of a more or less straightforward narrative. At one point in the film, after the Doorman steals the uniform, he perceives that the hotel is about to fall on top of him; in another, a montage of distorted and grotesque imagery brilliantly evokes the Doorman's drunken, dispirited point-of-view. Despite its absurdly tacked-on happy ending, reportedly forced by the studio, Der Letzte Mann remains a towering cinematic achievement that still moves and dazzles.

All Movie Guide - Jonathan Crow