8.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious Hotel is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.
Starring: Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft, Hans Unterkircher, Olaf Storm, Hermann VallentinForeign | 100% |
Drama | 49% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Music: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
Music: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
1536 kbps
English
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
As I've watched and re-watched F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), I've noticed how maintaining and perhaps surpassing one's rank is vitally important, as exemplified by the hotel doorman played by Emil Jannings. The film's unnamed hotelportier learns from the hotel manager (Hans Unterkircher), who is his unsympathetic supervisor, that he's been demoted to an attendant in the hotel's washroom/lavatory. Murnau and his cinematographer Karl Freund film a long take outside of the hotel manager's glass doors. The windowpane bars signify the hotelportier's psychological imprisonment and claustrophobia. Serving as a porter outside of Berlin's lavish hotel The Atlantic was always a source of pride and dignity for the central protagonist portrayed by Jannings. The demotion reduces him to a melancholic, decrepit old man.
The rank and file order in Germany reminds me a lot of the rigid class structure in Edwardian England. The character I think most of in relation to the plight faced by the doorman is the father of Anthony Hopkins's Stevens in The Remains of the Day (1993). In that film (as well as in the Ishiguro novel), Mr. Stevens, Sr. (Peter Vaughan) is a butler who has waited at tables for fifty-four years. But he suffers a terrible accident in the courtyard of Darlington Hall when he slips and falls while carrying a heavy tray. His duties are greatly reduced and he, like the Jannings character, suffers a demotion. He's already been dealt a major psychological blow, which carries with it his mental demise.
In The Last Laugh, the doorman requests that a night watchman (Georg John) fetch him a bellhop's uniform so that he can wear it home with him so his family doesn't realize he now wears white clothes at his day job. This works for a while until a relative (Emilie Kurz) of his brings something for him at the hotel only to spot him in the lavatory. It seems like the Jannings character won't be able to get out of his class till the epilogue, which scenarist Carl Mayer did not write and seems imparted by the studio, UFA.
Before the film formally begins, the following text appears in white across two screens against a black background:
"The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann) was filmed with multiple cameras so that three separate negatives could be created. One negative was used for the creation of prints for the German market. Another was intended for international export, and the third for American distribution.
This is a restoration of the German version, of which a complete negative did not survive. It has been reconstructed through the assembly of the following materials: the original camera negative from the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin; a print (struck in Germany in 1936) by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; fragments of a print from the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden; and fragments of a print from the Cinémathèque Suisse in Lausanne.
The photochemical restoration was performed in 2001/2002, supervised by Luciano Berriatúa and Camille Blot-Wellens on behalf of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung. The laboratory work was performed by L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna.
The preservation negative of this version was the basis for this 2K digitization. After scanning, extensive retouching and dirt removal were performed."
The Last Laugh appears in its original theatrical exhibition ratio of 1.33:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. Kino's 2K restoration looks mostly marvelous with a clear grayscale and deep blacks. There are tramlines and scratches (see Screenshot #s 16-19) but damage marks are neither too prevalent nor too obtrusive. Kino encodes the main feature at a mean video bitrate of 29998 kbps, with the full disc's total bitrate clocking in at 35.36 Mbps.
Kino supplies a new musical score (2017) by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra and Giuseppe Becce's original 1924 score, which was orchestrated by Detlev Glanert in 2003. Both scores receive LPCM Audio 2.0 Stereo tracks (1536 kbps, 16-bit). I listened to both scores and the most recent one fills in various sound effects, such as the whistle blown by Jannings's character. Becce's score only performs the whistle effect when a drunken Jannings is around a bunch of food the morning after a wedding party. Becce's symphonic score fluctuates from brass chords (for a jaunty march) to woodwinds and some light string-playing.
Kino provides the original German title cards, which come with optional English intertitles. There are no separate cards for the unheard dialogue and that was intended by the filmmakers.
The Last Laugh is one of the exemplars of German Expressionist cinema and also one of F.W. Murnau's greatest masterpieces. If you own Kino's 2008 two-disc Restored Deluxe Edition, you will want to upgrade. Kino's 2K-scanned transfer features a sparkling image that has never looked better. You also get three different scores to the movie, including one on the bonus DVD. The extras include a fine commentary by film historian Noah Isenberg and an outstanding making-of documentary. Kino has not ported over any of its image galleries, however. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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