I found it completley impossible to write about this film without revealing key plot details. This is the kind of film where the less you know about going in, the better, so don't read this if you plan to see it. SPOILERS EVERWHERE!
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While looking up reviews for this film before writing about it, I found the critics at the time of its release acclaimed as the greatest film ever made. Some now consider it Murneau's best film. So, yes, my friends, this is another movie like Vertigo, 8 1/2, Pulp Fiction, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Nashville and Yojimbo that I just do not see what the big deal is. I could lie and say I liked it to look smart, but honesty prevents me from going further.
I stated in the preface to this review that if you are going to see the film not to read this. I'm serious. The less you know about this film going into it, the better. From this point forward, I am assuming that you have either seen the film or are not planning to. You've been warned.
The premise is certainly simple. Emil Jannings plays a doorman (none of the characters are named) who looses his job and is forced to work as a bathroom attendant. Everyone around him thinks he's a loser and laughs at him. He goes mad with depression, gets kicked out of his house, is forbidden from seeing his own daughter. Then, in a complety unexpected turn of events, he comes upon a fortune and gets the last laugh of the title.
While watching the movie, I couldn't help but think of the films of Vittorio De Sica. His masterpiece Umberto D. has a similer premise: a poor old man desperatley trying to cling to a shred of dignity. The crucial difference is that in De Sica's film we really get to care about the old man, it's no so much that he is a character in the movie than he is an actual person. In this film, I never got involved with the doorman's plight. I also found the reactions of the characters to be hard to beleive. Everyone suddenly hates him because he lost his job? I mean, I know that people will respond to you differently when that happens, but the extent of the isolation the character feels in such a short legnth of time in this film is kind of rediculous.
Although the cover of the Kino DVD calls it "F.W. Murneau's masterpeice of German expressionism", aside from a few dream sequences, most of the film is about as close the silent cinema can get to realism. This is not Murnau's strong point. He's best when he goes way out into formulist expressionsim, a la Nosferatu and Faust. I give him credit for trying somethiggn new, but most of thes attempt doesn't work. With the lack of intertitles he tries for a Griffith-like quality, but it just comes off as confusing. I was unsure what the character relationships were.
And then there's there is the ending. It's totally unexpected and is not at all in keeping with theme or style of the rest of the film. Some could argue that it's the doorman's insane fantasy, but an intertitle (the only one in the film) seems to state that it's real, at least withing the boundries of the movie. The ending is very funny- the image of Emil Jannings wearing a bib and pigging out at the hotel while people wait on him is downright hilarious. But funny as it is, it's inapproiate. It turns the rest of the movie into a very long set up to a very funny joke. I could beleive it in a Chaplin film, but I don't buy it here.
One source I looked at says the studio forced Murnau to add a happy ending, another said Murnau may have desired it himself. Either way, it's all wrong. I am reminded of a similer story about the studio forcing King Vidor to add a similer endnig to The Crowd, but preview auinces founded it stupid and Vidor was given the ending he wanted. The Crowd is also simler to this film, but that movie had charcters I could care about and interseting ideas, it was a real masterpiece. I don't know why The Last Laugh is so well respected. Could somebody please tell me?
The Last Laugh (1924)