Starring Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft and Max Hiller
Produced by Universum Film (UFA)
This is where I normally provide a plot synopsis of the movie, so here it goes:
An elderly porter at a hotel has trouble getting a suitcase from the roof of a car in the rain. Winded, he takes a break and a drink. This is observed by the hotel manager who demotes the porter to the position of washroom attendant. The loss of status turns the man's world completely upside-down.
That's it. An elegantly simple tale. The trick is it is told by two absolute masters: F.W. Murnau and Emil Jannings.
Most films of this era are locked into their scene and their subject. It's a matter of technology of course, but the best directors know how to use that limitation combined with editing to tell their tale.
Murnau frees his camera. It moves around the hotel where the porter works, the apartment where he lives, the streets that he walks. It doesn't just dolly around; it floats and flies. It races down a hall so we can see what awaits or zooms in tight to the ear of a gossiping neighbor. It reveals characters hiding or sleeping or being stalked. The complete freedom of the camera creates a suspense about what is lurking out of the frame or where the camera may go next.
Murnau also brings in the expressionistic elements he's so well associated with. After the porter loses his prized job, the hotel itself becomes a thing of menace, not just towering over our hero, but reaching down as if to attack him. In a dream sequence, we see the man's idealized version of his job, standing guard before a revolving door that reaches up to heaven.
And that dream sequence... Just perfect. We start with him before the doors. Then he sees six men struggling with a trunk. He marches over to the men and lifts the suitcase over his head with one. Then, he marches into the crowded hotel lobby and performs for the assemblage by tossing the immoveable object high into the air. Murnau imbues the scene with gauzy dreamlike movement by using that mobile camera. It's simultaneously sedate and kinetic.
As for Jannings in the lead role, he is masterful. Good actors can play any emotion. With Jannings, his characters can seemingly lock that emotion on their face. That ability is critical to this film's success.
For the film to work, we have to believe that Jannings character's position, his status, his very life are tied to this job. And Jannings sells that. We see his pride in wearing the ornate doorman's coat. He walks the streets not as a hotel employee, but as a conquering general. He has dignity and pride. He is not just a man; he's THE man.
And when that coat is taken from him, we see him diminished. We see his age and his frailty. He's lost and rudderless. When he steals back his coat, it's not rebellious or defiant. It's pathetic. And when he later returns the coat, it is a depressingly sad moment. The general has been utterly defeated.
SPOILERS. There is a tacked on "happy" ending that I can imagine will divide opinion. Some will like to see our hero get some reward for his pain. Others will hate the out of left field saccharine epilogue. I read it a third way: it's a complete demonstration of just how terrible our porter's life is. The author has to break the fourth wall to save the man as there was no way he could do it himself. That's an exclamation point on his plight.
As with most films, The Last Laugh has problems. The biggest is the way his family and neighborhood react to his demotion. His wife runs screaming from him. His neighbors sit and wait so they can laugh at him. It's absurd in a way that underlines the porter's pathos, but it also drags the viewer out of the movie.If you saw your significant other in a position of a lesser station, would you react like Jason Voorhees just appeared with a shiny, new chainsaw? I think not.
That is picking the smallest of nits compared with the artistic achievement of The Last Laugh. It may be judged too slow by some, but Murnau and Jannings have teamed to deliver a film that seems impossibly brilliant when compared to its contemporaries. It is emotionally raw and technically exemplary. This is one of the best films I have ever seen. Period.
***** out of *****
NOTE: Yes, I know this out of order. The guys on the Battleship Pretension podcast recently did a Murnau retrospective and extolled the virtues of The Last Laugh. The need to watch this has been gnawing on my brain ever since.
This film also seems to introduce a time-honored trope. If you've ever seen a movie show someone is drunk by either showing their head as the room rotates around them or by showing the lush's perspective through unfocused, jittery camerawork, both of those are here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment