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The Last Laugh (1039 words) |
 | Murnau's "The Last Laugh" (1924) tells this story in one of the most famous of silent films, and one of the most truly silent, because it does not even use printed intertitles. |
| Silent directors were proud of their ability to tell a story through pantomime and the language of the camera, but no one before Murnau had ever entirely done away with all written words on the screen (except for one sardonic comment we'll get to later). |
| Jannings came to America at the same time as Murnau, won the Academy Award for "The Last Command" (1928), was rendered unemployable by the rise of the talkies, returned to Germany, and found one of his most famous roles, as Marlene Dietrich's erotically mesmerized admirer in "The Blue Angel" (1930). |
| The Last Laugh (813 words) |
| The Last Laugh is the penultimate expressionistic street film, full of sets that look both realistic and fantastic at the same time, unsettling multiple exposures, operatic performances whose weight you can really feel on your chest, and a magic that few movies made after audio took over have been able to tap. |
| The main character, the Last Man (Letze Mann) of the original German title, is the hotel doorman, an imposing but elderly man with an enormous mustache that continues all the way to his sideburns past an amazing flourish of hair that extends from his cheeks. |
| In The Last Laugh the man derives his power and swagger from his uniform, from alcohol and from wealth; without at least one of the three he is a stooped wreck of a human being. |
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