Der Letze Mann
GER 90m Dir: F.W. Murnau Key Cast: Emil Jennings
Original Screenplay
The Last Laugh is an attempt to make a film entirely without intertitles, the equivalent of a modern film not having any dialogue. There are a couple of moments when it sort of cheats by using written documents to give some exposition but on the whole it achieves what it set out to do.
Initially I was underwhelmed with the story. A hotel doorman has great respect in his local community thanks to his fancy uniform but he is getting old and can no longer manage the heavy luggage so is demoted to become a bathroom attendant, a move that utterly humiliates him. It's a simple story but actually by the end I thought it worked quite well as a story about aging, something even modern cinema doesn't tend to focus on very much. It feels like the more the man is told he his incapable due to his age the more it becomes true.
The film originally had a very bleak but appropriate ending with the doorman gradually withering away in his lowly new position. The studio insisted on a much happier ending and so one was tacked on the end. This was done really badly with the doorman inexplicably coming into a large fortune. It could have worked if the plotline was seeded throughout the film but it's literally like they finished the film and then shoved on a bit more.
It's the remarkable cinematography that is the highlight of this film. The camera follows the doorman around in a way that feels very modern. It's far more dynamic than most films of the era with the camera going through rooms and revolving doors, generally giving you the feeling that you are there in the hotel. This style of filming means we get a 360 view of the sets and extras which really add a feeling of reality. There's even a few tracking shots which decent even for modern standards, let along those of 1924.
It's a remarkably well made film whose story doesn’t quite match it's cinematic ambitions and is undone by the terrible tacked on happy ending.
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