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The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

Posted By: Someonelse
The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

The Last Laugh (1924)
DVD9 | ISO+MDS | PAL 4:3 | Artwork | 01:30:39 | 7,59 Gb
Score AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | German intertitles with optional English subtitles
Genre: Drama | Masters of Cinema #23

Director: F.W. Murnau
Stars: Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft, Max Hiller

A landmark work in the history of the cinema, Der letzte Mann represents a breakthrough on a number of fronts. Firstly, it introduced a method of purely visual storytelling in which all intertitles and dialogue were jettisoned, setting the stage for a seamless interaction between film-world and viewer. Secondly, it put to use a panoply of technical innovations that continue to point distinct ways forward for cinematic expression nearly a century later. It guides the silent cinema’s melodramatic brio to its lowest abject abyss — before disposing of the tragic arc altogether. The lesson in all this? That a film can be anything it wants to be… but only Der letzte Mann (and a few unforgettable others) were lucky enough to issue forth into the world under the brilliant command of master director F.W. Murnau.

His film depicts the tale of an elderly hotel doorman (played by the inimitable Emil Jannings) whose superiors have come to deem his station as transitory as the revolving doors through which he has ushered guests in and out, day upon day, decade after decade. Reduced to polishing tiles beneath a sink in the gents’ lavatory and towelling the hands of Berlin’s most-vulgar barons, the doorman soon uncovers the ironical underside of old-world hospitality. And then — one day — his fate suddenly changes…

Der letzte Mann (also known as The Last Laugh, although its original title translates to “The Last Man”) inaugurated a new era of mobile camera expression whose handheld aesthetic and sheer plastic fervour predated the various “New Wave” movements of the 1960s and beyond. As the watershed entry in Murnau’s work, its influence can be detected in such later masterpieces as Faust, Sunrise, and Tabu — and in the films of the same Hollywood dream-factory that would offer him a contract shortly after Der letzte Mann’s release. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the original German domestic version of the work that some consider the greatest silent film ever made.


THE LAST LAUGH, F.W. Murnau's classic study of a hotel employee's humiliation, is unusual on two counts: it is a silent movie without explanatory intertitles; and it's a tragedy that ends on a totally unexpected, outrageously upbeat note of vindication.
When the demands of his job become too much for him, the aging doorman (Emil Jannings) of a large hotel is demoted to men's room porter. That night, he wears his doorman's uniform home in an attempt to keep the news of his degradation secret from his family and neighbors.

The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

The next day, after discovering the truth when she brings him his lunch, his aunt (Emilie Kurz) hurries home to relay the shocking news to his daughter (Maly Delschaft). A malicious neighbor overhears their conversation and immediately spreads the gossip throughout the apartment house, and in no time, the old porter's plight is the talk of the block. That night his arrival home is greeted by the mocking laugher of his neighbors, the tears of his daughter, and the scorn of her fiance (Max Hiller). He returns to the hotel, surrenders his doorman's uniform, and retreats to his work station, where he slumps despondently in a chair as the night watchman (Georg John) comforts him.

The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

A miracle happens. An eccentric millionaire has stipulated in his will that his entire fortune will go to the person holding him when he dies. That individual turns out to be the old porter in the washroom, who celebrates his windfall by living it up in the restaurant of his former place of employment accompanied by his friend the night watchman. After embracing and lavishly tipping the new lavatory attendant, the old porter tips the entire hotel staff, summons a carriage with his doorman's whistle, and rides off in triumph.

The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

THE LAST LAUGH is the most celebrated of the handful of silent movies released without expository or dialogue titles. (The film does contain a few indigenous graphics but only one of them, a newspaper report of the porter's inheritance, is narratively indispensable.) We know that THE LAST LAUGH's characters–unlike the people in THE THIEF, a 1952 sound movie without dialogue–sometimes speak to each other because we can see their lips moving. But the tale being told is so elemental and its presentation so adroit that we do not need titles to tell us what is going on.

The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

Widely regarded as an expressionist masterpiece, THE LAST LAUGH might more accurately be described as a realistic fable that frequently uses expressionistic techniques to evoke and underline the feelings of its protagonist–in contrast to THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) or METROPOLIS (1926), in which expressionistic distortion seems to have spread from the characters' psyches and infected the film's narrative eye. And despite its moments of pointed satire, this profoundly humanistic film is not a morality play. Vain, prideful, and foolish as the picture's porter may be, he is far too kindly a figure to function as the stooge in a cautionary tale about the wages of sin.

The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

Emil Janning's portrait of him is unforgettable. Like Lon Chaney, another of the silent screen's most gifted character actors, Jannings was a master of quiescent body language; he could express a wide range of emotions without moving a muscle. As THE LAST LAUGH's old porter he is humiliation personified. Shame has knocked him literally lopsided, and for long stretches of screen time, he just stands there, frozen solid by despair. At times he looks like the tragic hero of a filmed opera pausing to deliver mute arias that are rendered in voice-over rather than live.

The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

Sixteen minutes before its conclusion, the movie proffers its first and last intertitle, a wry apology for the happily-ever-after epilogue to follow. Critics, Marxists, and other grouches have been bemoaning this cop-out conclusion for decades (though no one seemed to mind when Ingmar Bergman ran a similar reverse at the end of THE MAGICIAN). If not fully digestible, however, THE LAST LAUGH's deus ex machina is defensible. Unlike Warner Bros.'s 1930 adaptation of Moby Dick, to cite one of many examples, this is not a case of a downbeat ending being displaced by an upbeat one. THE LAST LAUGH's concluding sequence can be received not as a reversal but as a distinct addendum that the fully forewarned viewer is free to accept or ignore–or as an instructive reminder that every once in a while, even one of the world's most abject losers lucks out and gets the last laugh. As the lottery ads say, "Hey. You never know."
The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]
The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann (1924) [Masters of Cinema #23] [Re-UP]

Special Features:
- New, progressive encode of the recent, magnificent film restoration.
- The original 1924 Giuseppe Becce score, orchestrated and performed by Detlev Glanert (2002)
- Der letzte Mann – The Making Of – documentary by Murnau expert Luciano Berriatúa (41:00)
- New and improved optional English subtitles (original German intertitles)

All Credits goes to Original uploader.

No More Mirrors, Please.


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