Much Ado About Nothing
Added 8/27/2009
The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann) is a story about an elderly man (Emil Jannings) who works at the Atlantic hotel. He is proud of his job, saluting guests at the door and hailing taxis for them. However, his manager soon realizes that the man tires easily and might be better suited for another position. He informs the man, who completely falls apart. His new job is to work as a bathroom attendant, but there is no prestige and the man is embarassed.
The action in the beginning is melodramatic to the point of being laughable in some places. Why is this man so concerned over losing his position? Instead of reacting like someone who is being shifted to an easier job, he goes into a catatonic state as if he were handed a death sentence.
The ending is satisfying to a degree, but it takes more than half of the film to get to that point. Until then, this is much ado about nothing.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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As in "The Blue Angel," Emil Jannings makes me want to die.
Added 4/12/2008
The poor old doorman (he is so PROUD of his job, and his uniform!) comes to work one day, and finds out that he has been replaced--in the worst possible way: someone else is already doing his job. Then, when he goes to see the boss, he is handed a slip saying that since he has been working there so long, the hotel management has decided to put their oldest employee in a home, and give him that fellow's job (giving the viewer yet another man to feel sorry for). But Jannings sees to it that even as a washroom attendant, he won't be any good either: he sees a heavy trunk on the boss's floor, and to prove that he is still capable of being a doorman, he tries to lift it--whereupon he has some sort of stroke, and for the rest of the film, walks around conscious only part of the time, and unable to stand up straight. He stands by the sink as a man washes his hands, with his arms full of little towels--but doesn't offer the man one. The man snatches one for himself, and of course leaves no tip.
It seemed to me that nobody was supposed to believe the happy tacked-on ending, in which someone leaves him a million marks, and, with the one man who didn't laugh at him--a fellow worker--celebrates by having a sumpteous meal in an elegant restaurant, and drives off in a coach and four with his friend. It is between Jannings' failure as a washroom attendant (when we see him fading into the dark color of the washroom walls) and the "happy ending" that we see the one card, which clearly says: life doesn't go this way, but for this occasion, we are going to pretend that life goes the way it doesn't.
The original title of the film was "The Last Man," not "The Last Laugh." There is a sex joke involved in the title, and the million marks Jannings inherits, so of course the title was changed. (The fact that Jannings has nothing to do with sex makes it all the funnier---ha. ha. ha.) NOTHING about this film will tickle your ribs!
One thing that was so shocking about the film is that as soon as Jannings' fortunes change for the worse, everyone laughs at him! I found myself thinking: when the Eskimos put the old man or woman out on an ice floe to die, because he/she could no longer be of any use to the community, DID THEY LAUGH AT HIM? I asked the film owner about this, and he started explaining about how the Germans in the '20s had no hearts, and went on and on about the treaty of Versailles....hey! I am very familiar with some Germans who lived through the '20s, and they didn't all laugh at the unfortunate. As with all other people, some did and some didn't. The closer you are to being in Jannings' shoes, the more likely you were to laugh at him. But the rich laughed too...
The faces in Murnau's films speak volumes; everyone's soul is layed bare. Murnau make you ralize how actually unnecessary language is most of the time, and how simple so many stories are. The film is perfectly crafted. The only question is: can you stand it?
I don't want to see it again. It is my third favorite Murnau film (the glorious "Sunrisre" and the terrifying "Nosferatu" tying for first and second).
But you gotta see it once. And maybe...don't laugh at the misfortunes of others, no matter how foolish they are.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Nobody knows you when you're down and out.....
Added 4/11/2008
I saw this film at a time when I was kind of down and out, and it really meant something at the time. It's one of the most beautiful, sad, haunting, and innovative silent films ever made. It is also famous for the fact it is told (except for one) without title cards. It is told with nothing but visual imagery. It concerns itself with a doorman who ends up being demoted to washroom attendant. The man (played brilliantly by Emil Jannings) is very proud of himself and his station, then is told that he is being demoted simply to make room for the young guard. You really feel for Jennings's character. How often are you passed over for a promotion or feel that your long tenure of service is not appreciated? Murnau treats the subject with a deep humanism, making the film more powerful.
The cinematography is outstanding. Murnau's framing is immaculate, and it's to his credit that his visual style is so acute that he can tell this story with only images. There is only one title card, but it's a rather self conscious one, and it leads to the "happy" ending, which is so overplayed and boisterous one thinks that Murnau is just placing it as a farce. I admit I don't really like it very much, but it doesn't ruin the film at all. This is one of my all time favorite silent films, and my favorite Murnau film.
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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A timeless everyman tragedy
Added 10/21/2007
I think I'm getting the hang of German Expressionism. It's about watching souls, not people on the screen. The extreme acting is not maudlin, it's naked: this is what the character is feeling, even if what they would actually be doing in this situation is completely different.
And it's about mood, aura; shadows, dreams, nightmares, fears and anxieties. It's not a very cheerful genre of film, that's for sure.
The plot of the film is simple, and rings of Dostoyevsky: The day before his daughter's wedding, an aging doorman at a hotel is stripped of his prestigious position and demoted to lowly bathroom attendant. In essence, he is stripped of his pride, and his identity. The rest of the movie shows him trying to deal, mostly unsuccessfully, with this change. It is not a happy or optimistic portrait - until the unbelievable, tacked on happy ending, which even the director pauses to disclaim.
This is simple everyman tragedy, and that's probably why it works. It's universal. Also, maybe it works better because the main character, as played by Emil Jannings, is such a mountain of a man that he requires a certain amount of respect, broadcasts, even in his weakest moments, a sense of dignity. The buffoon Harker in Nosferatu completely lacks anything of this quality, and when he laughs at an account of vampires in a book he finds at an inn, you feel like you're being set up for comedy. Even the vampire himself, in his maudlin menace, is easier to laugh at than take seriously. He looks like someone who's trying to be menacing. And that's nothing but comedy.
Jannings, on the other hand, does not seem at all comedic. So while there are no shortage of overacted scenes, as when he freezes, wide-eyed, upon being demoted, and the attendants strip him of his precious doorman's coat, something still rings true.
What I feel is that, even if no one would really act like this, this is how the soul feels nonetheless.
And then there is that title card at the end. Our man has been so stripped of identity and respect that he cannot bear to stay at home, so he goes back to the hotel and takes up his position inside the darkened bathroom. The night watchman pities him and gives him his coat; the camera pans out and he looks as if he is simply waiting for death to take him. And then, the lone titlecard:
"Here our story should really end, for in real life the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death.
The author took pity on him, however, and quit an improbably epilogue."
And the rest is crap, and the director knows it. But I have to give him props for admitting it. Tacked on, improbably endings have become a staple of Hollywood: often producers demand a happy ending because it will make more money, even if a worse movie. But this is the only time, as far as I know, that a movie lets us know that's what's happening.
Directed by FW Murnau (who also directed Nosferatu) and shot by Karl Freund, the film is celebrated for several technical achievements. As always, I find that some technical achievements really do make a better movie and are worth noting, and that others are little more than historical footnotes.
On the "better movie" end: There are no title cards, until the disclaimer near the end. This is the kind of creative restraint that makes a director tell a better story: everything is shown, not told to us.
On the "historical footnote" end: The camera moves. This was fairly novel at the time, and perhaps audiences took note of it then. Of course, these days, cameras do much more than move, so I hardly noticed. Apparently there is a "famous" shot in which a camera passes through a window. I don't remember it.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Brilliant
Added 3/15/2007
This beautiful brilliant film is ample proof of why F.W. Murnau was one of the finest directors of the silent era. He may not have churned out as many films as the likes of, say, Ernst Lubitsch or Thomas Ince, but he proved that quality can be more meaningful than quantity. He was more interested in pure artistic creative vision than in churning out a lot of films in a short timespan to make a lot of money and be hailed as a commercial success. What makes this film even more brilliant is the fact that it's told entirely devoid of intertitles, but for some writing on a cake, a letter, a newspaper article, and the text introducing the epilogue. And yet the film doesn't suffer at all from no explanatory intertitles or dialogue. Those would actually get in the way and interrupt the flow of this beautiful perfect story of a lonely old man dealing with an increasingly low point in his life. The best directors of the silent era tried not to over-rely upon intertitles for this very reason, and felt that a really good story could tell itself on its own merits.
The plot seems simple enough. An old doorman at the posh Atlantic Hotel, Emil Jannings, is very proud of his position and his imperial-looking uniform, though many of his neighbors feel he's too full of himself over his high position. Today one might not think of a hotel doorman/porter as being a very important job at all, but one has to remember that not only does he live in the poor side of town, but also what the economic situation in Germany was like during the Twenties. A hotel porter living in the slums would have been considered like a prince in this era of off-the-charts inflation and national depression and malaise over the heavy handed treatment it was being given after having lost the First World War. One day, however, he discovers that another man has taken his job, and finds himself demoted to the position held by the hotel's oldest employee, who has just retired--the lowly, menial, humiliating job of a bathroom attendant. (It's hard to believe that once such a position actually existed; it just seems lazy that anyone would expect someone to hand them a towel and soap and dry their hands and turn the water on for them instead of doing it themselves! This part of the plot also really hit home for me, since I had a temp job in an insurance company after graduating college but after only a month or so was told that the job I'd been doing was going to be finished by someone within the company, and my next temp job after that was cleaning the bathrooms in that very same building where I'd once had a more prestigious and less humiliating position.) This really depresses the old man, and he rankles under the treatment he gets from the people using the bathroom, but he doesn't want to tell his family the truth, so he pretends he's still working as the doorman. The ruse doesn't hold up, and when it's discovered, he becomes the laughingstock of the whole neighborhood. Emil Jannings does a super job at portraying this lonely anguished old man's heartbreaking poignant emotional journey. The ending is also fantastic; though it does rather go against everything that's been established in this poignant character study, to have just ended the film on the depressing note before the epilogue begins would seem wrong. Hasn't this poor old man already suffered enough slings and arrows? He deserves a happy ending and to have "the last laugh."
This film is easily one of the finest films of the silent era, for its brilliance in telling an entire story with nary an interruption for an intertitle but instead a constantly fluid camera doing the work, and possibly could also be considered one of the finest films period. It does so much with so little, and makes one wonder if film-making has really advanced that much since the Twenties. One does not need constant talk, be it through spoken dialogue or printed intertitles, to create a beautiful film with a convincing compelling understandable storyline.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Much Ado About Nothing
Added 8/27/2009
The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann) is a story about an elderly man (Emil Jannings) who works at the Atlantic hotel. He is proud of his job, saluting guests at the door and hailing taxis for them. However, his manager soon realizes that the man tires easily and might be better suited for another position. He informs the man, who completely falls apart. His new job is to work as a bathroom attendant, but there is no prestige and the man is embarassed.
The action in the beginning is melodramatic to the point of being laughable in some places. Why is this man so concerned over losing his position? Instead of reacting like someone who is being shifted to an easier job, he goes into a catatonic state as if he were handed a death sentence.
The ending is satisfying to a degree, but it takes more than half of the film to get to that point. Until then, this is much ado about nothing.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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As in "The Blue Angel," Emil Jannings makes me want to die.
Added 4/12/2008
The poor old doorman (he is so PROUD of his job, and his uniform!) comes to work one day, and finds out that he has been replaced--in the worst possible way: someone else is already doing his job. Then, when he goes to see the boss, he is handed a slip saying that since he has been working there so long, the hotel management has decided to put their oldest employee in a home, and give him that fellow's job (giving the viewer yet another man to feel sorry for). But Jannings sees to it that even as a washroom attendant, he won't be any good either: he sees a heavy trunk on the boss's floor, and to prove that he is still capable of being a doorman, he tries to lift it--whereupon he has some sort of stroke, and for the rest of the film, walks around conscious only part of the time, and unable to stand up straight. He stands by the sink as a man washes his hands, with his arms full of little towels--but doesn't offer the man one. The man snatches one for himself, and of course leaves no tip.
It seemed to me that nobody was supposed to believe the happy tacked-on ending, in which someone leaves him a million marks, and, with the one man who didn't laugh at him--a fellow worker--celebrates by having a sumpteous meal in an elegant restaurant, and drives off in a coach and four with his friend. It is between Jannings' failure as a washroom attendant (when we see him fading into the dark color of the washroom walls) and the "happy ending" that we see the one card, which clearly says: life doesn't go this way, but for this occasion, we are going to pretend that life goes the way it doesn't.
The original title of the film was "The Last Man," not "The Last Laugh." There is a sex joke involved in the title, and the million marks Jannings inherits, so of course the title was changed. (The fact that Jannings has nothing to do with sex makes it all the funnier---ha. ha. ha.) NOTHING about this film will tickle your ribs!
One thing that was so shocking about the film is that as soon as Jannings' fortunes change for the worse, everyone laughs at him! I found myself thinking: when the Eskimos put the old man or woman out on an ice floe to die, because he/she could no longer be of any use to the community, DID THEY LAUGH AT HIM? I asked the film owner about this, and he started explaining about how the Germans in the '20s had no hearts, and went on and on about the treaty of Versailles....hey! I am very familiar with some Germans who lived through the '20s, and they didn't all laugh at the unfortunate. As with all other people, some did and some didn't. The closer you are to being in Jannings' shoes, the more likely you were to laugh at him. But the rich laughed too...
The faces in Murnau's films speak volumes; everyone's soul is layed bare. Murnau make you ralize how actually unnecessary language is most of the time, and how simple so many stories are. The film is perfectly crafted. The only question is: can you stand it?
I don't want to see it again. It is my third favorite Murnau film (the glorious "Sunrisre" and the terrifying "Nosferatu" tying for first and second).
But you gotta see it once. And maybe...don't laugh at the misfortunes of others, no matter how foolish they are.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Nobody knows you when you're down and out.....
Added 4/11/2008
I saw this film at a time when I was kind of down and out, and it really meant something at the time. It's one of the most beautiful, sad, haunting, and innovative silent films ever made. It is also famous for the fact it is told (except for one) without title cards. It is told with nothing but visual imagery. It concerns itself with a doorman who ends up being demoted to washroom attendant. The man (played brilliantly by Emil Jannings) is very proud of himself and his station, then is told that he is being demoted simply to make room for the young guard. You really feel for Jennings's character. How often are you passed over for a promotion or feel that your long tenure of service is not appreciated? Murnau treats the subject with a deep humanism, making the film more powerful.
The cinematography is outstanding. Murnau's framing is immaculate, and it's to his credit that his visual style is so acute that he can tell this story with only images. There is only one title card, but it's a rather self conscious one, and it leads to the "happy" ending, which is so overplayed and boisterous one thinks that Murnau is just placing it as a farce. I admit I don't really like it very much, but it doesn't ruin the film at all. This is one of my all time favorite silent films, and my favorite Murnau film.
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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