THE LAST LAUGH (1924)

A.K.A.: Der letzte Mann

Country: Germany

Genre(s): Drama

Director: F.W. Murnau

Cast: Emil Jannings / Maly Delschaft / Hans Unterkircher

Plot

A proud old man is demoted from the doorman of a luxury hotel to bathroom attendant, losing his sense of identity and self-worth.

What I Liked

When it comes to silent-era filmmakers who established the technical conventions that would govern the rules of motion picture storytelling, the names that most often come up are D.W. Griffith, George Melies, maybe Edwin Porter.  In this regard, Germany’s F.W. Murnau is severely overlooked, and “The Last Laugh” proves it.  In 1924, Murnau (along with accomplished cinematographer Karl Freund) innovates techniques that would become the signatures of later film giants like Hitchcock and Scorsese.  In most silent films, the camera is frozen in a fixed position, the characters and events confined to the inside of the frame.  At best, the occasional pan might follow a character’s linear movements, such as in the adventurous endeavors of Douglas Fairbanks or Buster Keaton.   In “The Last Laugh,” however, the camera is free to move about as though it is a character itself.  It lurks around alley corners, passes through closed doors and windows, ascends and descends staircases, so that the world does not need to pass through the camera.  Rather, it is the camera that subjectively investigates the world.  This technique is so common in modern film that we don’t notice it when it happens, yet the effect is so smooth and flawless in “The Last Laugh” that it still mesmerizes and had me wondering “How did they do that?”  It is clear the camera was not rolled on a track and the movement is too smooth for the camera to have been handheld.

One of Murnau’s goals for making the film was to tell a visual story using the silent motion picture medium, without using title cards.  You know, those black screens with white text in silent movies that explain the events, setting, and dialogue.  Astoundingly, he achieves this without the viewer once getting confused about what is happening on screen.  Murnau was clearly a man who not only wanted to expand the language of filmmaking, but also pushed himself hard to intentionally put his own creativity to the test.

What I Didn’t Like

Of course, if you have no sound and no title cards, you better give yourself a pretty straight-forward storyline without much complexity so that your viewer doesn’t get lost.  Murnau and crew have clearly sacrificed depth of story in favor of technical innovation.  My basic plot description above really does sum up the entire one-hour-plus storyline.  The result is an overall boring story, leaving the film to be saved by its outstanding visuals and its characters.  Thus star Emil Jannings (the biggest name in German film of the time, who played a similarly humiliated and dehumanized older gentleman in “The Blue Angel”) is forced to overact through the whole thing to make sure the story is fully communicated to his audience and they are given something interesting to watch.  

Speaking of the story, the preposterous happy ending just feels entirely out of place, separated from the rest by the film’s only title card, which serves as a disclaimer from the filmmakers basically admitting that the happy ending is unnecessary and stupid.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the studio forced Murnau to patch this on to the end to keep patrons from getting to depressed by the sad story.  Luckily it doesn’t detract too much from the powerful stuff that came before.

Most Memorable Scene

Thankfully, the restored print that I watched (on Netflix) is immaculate, clear, and bright.  There is none of the fading, whitewash, or corrosion that too often diminish the impact of a silent film’s original appearance.  The settings and people are look alive and vibrant, not pallid or decrepit.  This is especially a benefit to the scene where the drunken Jannings falls asleep and dreams that he is a man of great strength admired by his peers.  Shot in a hallucinatory haze, with Klaus’ camera careening through the pulsating crowd of dream people, this is the most visually impressive scene of the film, taking the film’s innovations to a new peak and setting the standard for every dream sequence filmed since.  Very impressive.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5