» International Silent Classics

“Almost the perfect film.”

-Alfred Hitchcock

In one of the crowning achievements of the German expressionist movement, THE LAST LAUGH (DER LETZTE MANN 1924), directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (PHANTOM, 1922), Emil Jannings stars as an aging hotel doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of the duties and uniform which had for years been the foundation of his happiness and pride. Through Jannings’s colossal performance, THE LAST LAUGH becomes more than the plight of a single doorman, but a mournful dramatization of the frustration and anguish of the universal working class, alongside such other realist German films of the Weimar era (1918-1933) as THE JOYLESS STREET, SLUMS OF BERLIN, CHILDREN OF NO IMPORTANCE, and THE PEOPLE AMONG US. The doorman’s total identification with his job, his position, his uniform and his image helps foreshadow the rise of the Nazi Party; once he puts on his uniform, the doorman is no longer an individual but a loyal instrument of a larger organization.

Shot entirely in the UFA Studio, THE LAST LAUGH is a masterwork of storytelling, utilizing only a single intertitle and relying entirely on Jannings’ expressive acting coupled with extensive use of camera movement. The script was written by Carl Meyer (THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, 1919). The art direction by Walter Röhrig and Robert Herlth imbued largely realist sets with the slightest hints of angularity and distortion to create an uncanny oppressiveness. The city that they birthed on a barren studio back lot is an achievement in scale, verisimilitude and forced perspective, able to take on a suddenly predatory quality in just the right light, with just the right lens. A precursor to the dizzying camera techniques in Marcel L’Herbier’s L’ARGENT (1928), cinematographer Karl Freund’s virtuoso cinematography permeates the entire film. To achieve various effects, Freund placed the camera on a wheelchair, positioned it on top of a bicycle, mounted it on a swing, and strapped it to his chest, at times plumbing cinematic height and depth, attenuating the scale of the buildings and providing forced perspectives; at other times, the dizzying camerawork externalizes the subjective disorientation of the porter. This technique later became known as “entfesselte Kamera” (unchained camera).

The domestic success of this film caught the attention of William Fox, who brought both Murnau and Jannings to America, where they continued their separate, but equally impressive filmmaking careers. Jannings won an academy award for his performance in THE LAST COMMAND (1928, directed by Josef Von Sternberg). For the Fox Film Co., Murnau brought his expressionist skills to the making of SUNRISE (1927).

"F. W. Murnau's 1924 drama THE LAST LAUGH (DER LETZTE MANN) may well be the apogee of silent-film production....The visual clarity of the new release reveals the extraordinary means by which Murnau united the emotional, political, psychological, and moral domains in his quasi-Biblical yet modern and naturalistic fable."

- Richard Brody, The New Yorker

This 2 disk edition includes a 2K digital restoration of the film sourced from celluloid copies of the movie located in various archives around the world. This version can be considered the definitive edition of this landmark classic.  The original 1924 score by Giuseppe Becce is included on the sound track, as well as an alternate, new musical score by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra. Bonus material includes an essential 40-minute documentary about the making of the film and the restoration of this definitive version. For comparison purposes, an unrestored export version (with music by Timothy Brock, performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra) is also featured.

Also by F.W. Murnau

All Silent German Film Titles Distributed by GME