Rating:

Murnau’s The Last Laugh is most famous for its complete lack of inter-titles and reliance on film as purely a visual medium to tell its story.  For all that’s made of that already impressive fact, it’s an accomplishment which seems almost minute next to the film’s overwhelming sense of humanity, reflected in both its careful attention to expressions and gestures as well as its use of deep focus (in the first act) to convey a sense of reality within which Murnau presents an upper and lower class seemingly on the same footing.  When Jannings’ doorman is fired, the camera is in tune with his sense of urgency, immediately taking on a more subjective and disillusioned perspective, amping up the melodrama and riding the back of Murnau’s expressive camera and Jannings’ equally expressive face.

The genius and chemistry of the Murnau-Jannings tandem is by no means reliant only on its well-known camera pyrotechnics.  Every moment of sadness, revenge, tragedy, joy and compassion is right there on the surface, yet there is such subtlety and acuity in their delivery that what could easily become bombastic and overly dramatic is given levity through the pure artistry of the duo and a comic absurdity that accompanies the film’s more disheartening scenes.  Consider the scene where the Jannings tries to prove to his employer that he’s still physically fit only to fall to the ground in exhaustion after failing to lift the bag over his head.  When his boss calls the new doorman in to escort him outside, Murnau uses a series of stationary shots as his uniform is violently stripped from his body.  This sequence of barbaric display of power with is followed by what is perhaps the most moving moment in the film – a zoom out to show the doorman in his tattered suit and a pan up to the shock on his face as he examines his current state.  Murnau follows this with a cut to a shot behind him look of absolute terror and agony as he sees the outfit that gave him his only sense of pride for so many years hanging idly in the closet.  It is a moment of profound compassion, enhanced by a perfect dose of cinematic flair and while no other scene quite matches this one, it embodies everything that makes The Last Laugh so brilliant.

What may be the film’s most valuable trait, however, is its ability to balance the truly tragic downfall of its protagonist with an almost gleeful sense of humor.  And here the great paradox that Murnau somehow works to his favor – a man who loses everything, including the respect of everyone who supposedly cared about him, yet the resulting tragedy is often quite hilarious.  Perhaps it is the film’s titular twist that allows the offbeat tone to not ultimately seem in bad taste and while the coda does indeed feel a bit out of place, it is at least in the spirit of the rest of the film.  If Murnau’s avoidance of sub-titles shows a faith in cinema’s visually expressive qualities, the ending suggests a belief in its regenerative powers, both in the feelings it conveys to the audience and the power of the auteur to bend the characters and their fictional world to their own liking.  Whether it is real, a dream or a fantasy is beside the point – it recreates its own reality simply because it can and although it doesn’t quite work, the very fact that Murnau even attempted it makes it something less than a fatal flaw in otherwise nearly perfect film.