The Last Laugh focuses on a hotel doorman played by Emil Jannings. As he walks home in the evening, still clad in the uniform of his profession, men tip their hats, and ladies nod and smile. The doorman eats up the attention. His journey home each night (and the reaction it elicits) fills him with pride, and it also instills a sense of pride in the neighborhood. But the doorman is getting old and his age occasionally shows, as when he staggers under the weight of a trunk. The hotel manager watches as the doorman nearly loses control of the trunk and the next day calls for him. When the doorman enters the manager's office, the manager pats him on the back, hands him a letter, and turns back to his work. What follows is one of the most remarkable scenes in the movie. First, the doorman must search his pockets for his glasses. He methodically removes them from their case and puts them on, and then he reads the letter and discovers he is being relieved of his duties as doorman: "In consideration of your long service with us, we have found another position for you by arranging for our oldest employee to be admitted to a home, so from to-day you will take over his duties."

Immediately, his body contorts, his shoulder hunch forward submissively, his face twitches. Jannings' acting becomes expressionistic as he depicts the doorman's trauma. Now the doorman must relinquish his uniform, so a clerk bodily removes it from the near catatonic doorman. The doorman, however, knows he can't go home without the uniform. So later he steals it and therefore establishes the deception in his neighborhood that nothing has changed. But when a well-meaning busy body visits him at work on his daughter's wedding day, the doorman's ruse is discovered. News of the doorman's descent to rank of washroom attendant is shouted from window to window throughout his neighborhood. Everyone who once showed him respect now only shows him scorn.

from The Last Laugh [click photo for larger version]

Murnau's vision is limited almost solely to the doorman's collapse. This narrow focus emphasizes the pain that the doorman feels. He can only stumble through his life. Without the physical manifestation of his identity--his uniform--the doorman becomes an empty shell, barely capable of even the most rudimentary form of communication. His daughter and her husband offer him no compassion. When he visits them, the harsh light from a single light bulb shines on their unyielding faces.

The Last Laugh is not always an easy movie for contemporary audiences to appreciate. Jannings' acting far out distances Murnau's filmmaking technique in terms of expressionism, creating an imbalance that threatens to undermine the story's credibility. However, The Last Laugh remains one of the great enduring classics of silent cinema due to Karl Freund's assured camerawork and the marvelous set designs of Robert Herlth and Walter Rohrig.

Kino's new DVD of The Last Laugh would have greatly benefited from liner notes or audio commentary. This material would have helped audiences place the movie in its historical and thematic context. Without notes or commentary, the movie seems bare and even somewhat fragile, but Kino's disc is still impressive. It includes a wonderful new score by Timothy Brock that is performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. And the video transfer was supplied from a 35mm negative in remarkably good condition.

 
Faust

from Faust [click photo for larger version]

To a large extent, one's reaction to Faust depends upon one's faith in visual imagery. While Murnau's Faust makes for simplistic literature, it's a cinematic tour-de-force. The opening scenes in particular are highlights of world cinema.

Emil Jannings stars as Mephisto, a winged demon who longs to claim the world as his own. He enters a bargain with an angel: "If thou canst destroy what is divine in Faust," says the angel, "the earth is thine!" Mephisto spreads his wings over the earth and sets loose a plague. Soon afterwards, as villagers begin dropping dead, Faust toils in his laboratory, searching for a cure for the plague, but after a woman dies as he tries to help her, he loses his faith and burns his books--including his Bible. Mephisto knows an opening when he see it and descends on Faust, promising to stop the plague if Faust will renounce God. When Mephisto offers a one-day trial pact, Faust finds the temptation too strong to resist, so he agrees. And thus begins Faust's battle to hold onto his own soul.

Most critical opinion of Faust tends to agree that the movie bogs down in its lengthy middle section where Mephisto restores Faust's youth and Faust woos a beautiful, innocent maiden named Gretchen. But once the love of Faust and Gretchen goes awry, the movie settles into a horrifying depiction of hypocrisy. Gretechen's community turns against her after it becomes known that she had a love affair with Faust. The community denies Gretchen and her child harbor during a harsh winter, and then she is charged with murder after her child dies. (Lilian Gish was originally set to play Gretchen, but she dropped out of the project when Murnau refused to use her own photographer.)

While the drama of Faust isn't always effective or even coherent, the images remain impressive in their epic-scale surrealistic grandeur. We're left with scenes such as Mephisto holding forth a parchment as flashes of burning writing appear; Faust and Mephisto flying over the countryside on Mephisto's cloak; Gretchen discovering the frozen corpse of her baby, with her subsequent screams soaring across the snow-covered mountains; a funeral pyre blazing as villagers watch; an angel contronting Mephisto in heaven, accompanied by clouds and rays of light; these scenes (and many others) carry an astonishing cumulative impact. Faust is indeed flawed--but one can only wish all masterpieces were so visually compelling.

Kino International has now released Faust on DVD in a superb presentation digitally mastered from 35mm archive materials. Timothy Brock has composed and conducted an evocative and stirring musical score that is performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. And the disc includes a gallery of rare production stills that recount the making of Faust.