Stars: Emil Jannings, Kurt Hiller, Emelie Kurtz, Hans Unterkirchen

Director: F.W. Murnau

Summary: The doorman at upmarket Berlin hotel is left distraught when the manger demotes him to a lavatory attendant. However, he gets the last laugh when he inherits a fortune from a wealthy American. Fully restored and digitally remastered.

One of the most brilliant of all German Expressionist silent films, Murnau's THE LAST LAUGH uses a constantly moving and subjective camera to capture the emotional anguish of a man whose life is suddenly devoid of meaning. Because of his age, an elderly doorman at a hotel finds himself ignominiously demoted to washroom attendant. Particularly galling to the poor man is the loss of his uniform, which gives him pride and prestige. Crestfallen, he spends the day wandering the city, getting drunk and dreaming of suicide, mourning the loss of his dignity, and trying desperately to hang on to a shred of hope.

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One of the most influential silent films of all time, FW Murnau's street-drama tragedy The Last Laughis a compendium of silent film techniques handled with a new sophistication. The story concerns an ageing hotel porter who loses his job to a younger, more dashing man and suffers the humiliation of being demoted to washroom attendant. When the hearty, rather pompous Emil Jannings is stripped of the dignified uniform of his station, he transforms into a scared little man scurrying through the shadows to hide his demotion from friends and family. Murnau captures the humiliation and calamitous fallout from the demotion (he loses not just his self-respect, but the esteem of his neighbours and even loses his apartment) in haunting, expressionistic images that magnify the petty events into tragic melodrama. The story seems a little extreme even for the genre but it's never less than a harrowing, subjective experience, even with the rather fanciful happy ending tacked on the end of it. Murnau famously throws the camera into motion--one of his most celebrated shots takes the viewers up an elevator, through the grand hotel lobby, and out the revolving glass door in a single smooth shot--and it hasn't stopped moving since. --Sean Axmaker

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	German
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Making Of Documentary, Facts And Dates, Biographies
Year:	1924
Release Date:	February 23, 2004
Runtime:	90 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	E K A 40073
Keywords:	Last, Mann, General, Edition, Laugh, Silent, Anniversary, Drama, Der, Aka, Letze, 80th
Genre:	Drama