Simply A Masterpiece

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's wonderful direction. Karl Freund's living camera. Walter Röhrig's half-expressionist settings. And Emil Janning's performance. Everything which makes this film unforgettable. This is one of the greatest films of the silent cinema. Pure cinema: only images, no inter-titles. Well, just two: to warn us at the beginning; to explain that the end was so depressing that they had to shoot another one. This is what we call a universal film. It is also a very simple story: a hotel doorman sinks and becomes a bathroom attendant.What makes this film great is the way this story is told. We follow each level of the old man's downfall. This small and common story becomes a great classical tragedy. This man with his shiny costume is no ordinary doorman: he commands the army of the people receiving the customers in the hotel with his whistle. He is not a doorman, he is the Marshall Hindenburg! But Time gets a grip on him. He is now a weak old man. He cannot carry suitcases like before. He is "degraded". He cannot wear his uniform anymore: it will rot in a cupboard. Now, he will look after the hotel bathroom, in the basement. Everyone in the hotel is above him: professionally and physically. He now has the lowest job in the hotel. Moreover, he sometimes has to crawl on the floor to clean it. Now that he works in the basement, we can say that his job has become an inferno. But one has to save the face: nobody must know what happened to him. Before coming home, he brings his old costume and wears it in front of his daughter and the neighbors. Unfortunately, his secret is revealed and everyone mocks him. Even his daughter. He cannot come back home. So he stays in his bathroom, alone, forgotten. Maybe waiting for death. This is the first ending. But as I said previously, the producers thought it was a bit too pessimistic (or was it too realistic?). So they shot another one. I cannot believe in this second ending.

"Der letzte Mann" or "The Last Man" is a German movie from over 90 years ago and it was directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau/Plumpe, one of the country's most known directors from that era, probably you could replace "country" by "world". The lead actor is Emil Jannings, five years before his Oscar win and as so many other times, he plays a character who is considerably older than he was at that time. Aging makeup was already a thing back then. The film is silent (if you hear a soundtrack, it was added later)and in black-and-white. Jannings plays a doorman at a hotel, who is down on his look for most of the film. Or is he really? This is mostly a drama and runs for 90 minutes in the restored version I watched. Still, it's tough for me to take it serious as such with Jannings' over-the-top face expressions basically from start to finish. Then again, this was a common problem back then. People tried to make up for the lack of sound by these comically expressions that just did never leave a good impact for me. Also this film may have needed more intertitles to understand exactly what is going on in all scenes. In my opinion, the material was not (good) enough for 90 minutes here. Not among Murnau's best. Not recommended.

F.W. Murnau didn't have a typical storyline - he could do pure Gothic horror as in Nosferatu, social commentary as in Phantom, fantasy with a religious theme as in Faust, and the redemption of love as in Sunrise. What ties Murnau's work together is its imagery. He excelled at it as few directors ever did. "The Last Laugh" is a tale about an older man who is proud of his position as doorman at a prominent German hotel. One night he has had to carry some heavy luggage as part of his duties and he takes a break. As luck would have it, his supervisor sees him taking this short rest and assumes the worst. The next day the old man is reassigned to the job of washroom attendant. He does his best to hide his change of position from his friends, but they find out anyway. To make matters worse, they assume he's always been lying about his job and that he has thus always been a washroom attendant. At this point you might wonder - why exactly is this film named The Last Laugh? There is a somewhat tacked on ending that is the foundation of the film's title. I won't spoil it for you.

The film is among the finest achievements of the silent cinema. The old doorman (Emil Jannings) of a luxury hotel is demoted to the job of lavatory attendant, but comes into a fortune and gets his revenge.The Last Laugh is an ironic silent anecdote, made important by its virtual abandonment of dialogue and the whole-hearted adoption of a freewheeling camera technique which gives some thrilling dramatic effects. The film is the most famous example of the short-lived Kammerspiel or "chamber-drama" genre. The set was built entirely within a studio, unusual for director F.W. Murnau, who preferred to shoot on location.