F. W. Murnau's "The Last Laugh" (1924) aka Der letzte Mann / The Last Man
32An aging Doorman (Emil Jannings) at a famous luxury Berlin hotel takes great pride in his work and position, and its complimentary uniform that affords him respect at the tenement where he lives with his Niece (Maly Delschaft). His Manager (Hans Unterkircher) decides that the Doorman is getting too old and feeble to present the image of the hotel, and so the Doorman loses his job to a younger, stronger man, and is demoted to a less demanding job, the less respectable position of washroom attendant.
The Doorman manages to steal his old uniform and wears it home. He tries to conceal his demotion from his friends and family to avoid the derision of his neighbors. At his daughter's wedding party, he gets drunk and has strange visions.
The next day, to his shame, one of the women from his tenement discovers his lowered status, and it spreads throughout the building. The Doorman is harshly ridiculed when he comes home that evening. His friends, thinking he has lied to them all along about his prestigious job, taunt him mercilessly while his family rejects him out of shame.
The Doorman, shocked and in grief, returns to the hotel to escape humiliation, and to sleep in the washroom where he works. The Doorman gives back his uniform to the Night Watchman (Georg John) on duty and goes to stay in the washroom. The only person to be kind towards him is the Night Watchman, who covers the old porter with his coat as he sits alone in the darkened lavatory, and falls asleep.
The film's only title card pops up saying, "Here our story should really end, for in actual life, the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author took pity on him, however, and provided quite an improbable epilogue."
At the end, the Doorman reads an article in the newspaper that he inherited a fortune from a Mexican millionaire named A. G. Money, a patron who died in his arms in the hotel washroom. The Doorman returns to his old hotel, where he dines happily, eating an extravagant meal with the Night Watchman, who showed him kindness. On their way to the carriage, the Doorman helps out the new washroom attendant, and gives tips to all the service personnel from the hotel, who quickly line up along his way.
When both the Doorman and the Night Watchman are in the carriage, a beggar asks the doorman for some money. The doorman invites the beggar to the carriage and even gives a tip to the new doorman, who is now in charge of bringing the guests inside, then rides off in a fancy carriage, respected and content.
A 1924 German Black & White silent film directed by F. W. Murnau, produced by Erich Pommer, screenplay by Carl Mayer, cinematography by Karl Freund, starring Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft, Max Hiller, Emilie Kurz, Hans Unterkircher, Olaf Storm, Hermann Vallenti, Georg John and Emmy Wyda.
It is a cinematic example of the Kammerspielfilm or "chamber-drama" genre, which follows the style of short, sparse plays of lower middle-class life that emphasized the psychology of the characters rather than the sets and action. The genre tried to avoid the intertitles (title cards) of spoken dialogue or description that characterize most silent films, in the belief that the visuals themselves should carry most of the meaning.
In 1955, the film was remade starring Hans Albers.
This was the first of Murnau’s films for UFA Studios in Germany. It was entirely filmed at UFA Studios using large elaborate sets for the hotel. This film succeeds in combining expressionist elements, such as extreme camera angles, distorted dream imagery, and disturbing light and shadow effects, with a complex psychological study of the main character in his fall from privilege. At the time, a young Alfred Hitchcock was working at UFA Studios.
The innovative camerawork remains one of the most striking aspects and is crucial to the film’s success. Dispensing with the customary intertitles and filming while moving the camera in extraordinarily inventive ways, Murnau and cinematographer Freund, transformed the language of film. The first ever “dolly” was used for during shots through the hotel as Emil Jannings moved through it.
Jannings starred in other projects of F.W. Murnau’s including as Mephistopheles in "Faust" (1926) and a number of Nazi propaganda films. When the Allies invaded Germany, Jannings carried his Oscar with him to justify his allegiance to the Allies. He won the (first ever) Oscar for Best Actor for his role in "The Way of all Flesh" (1927), and for Josef von Sternberg’s "The Last Command" (1928).
This wonderfully sardonic, highly influential film is a brilliant little tragic farce of silent cinema, and emerges as an extremely important film in cinematic history, particularly for its integration of various modes of objective and subjective representation and fluid camerawork. The almost complete lack of title cards allows it to succeed aesthetically and thematically in strictly visual terms and marks it as a work of pure cinema.