It’s hard to state just how influential director F. W. Murnau was on early cinema. Nosferatu brought chilling horrors to the big screen in one of the earliest, and most memorable, horror films. His drama piece, The Last Laugh, provides us with a versatile range of what Murnau had to offer as a director. With contemporary eyes being kind to this 1924 silent film, it’s nice to see that The Last Laugh is both an influential piece of filmmakers of the future, but also a piece that can stand up on its own, engaging merits.
Murnau’s story is told in vivid detail, more than I would have expected from this period of time. Bringing us a heart-wrenching story of an elderly doorman who finds himself suddenly without a job and ridiculed, The Last Laugh is a great character study and muses on ageism from time to time. Murnau’s dedication to making sure the message is received by his audience is wonderful. We see experimentation with the camera rather frequently throughout this, most showcasing the binary opposites between our leading man and his replacement. His spiral is consistent and heartfelt, with Murnau capturing the emotion of such a story with relative ease. He coaxes it out of his protagonist rather well, prying at the age and frivolous nature of Emil Jannings’ performance. Janning plays well with the artistic merits of the film also, always towing the line for Murnau’s incredible shots and tremendously good-looking scenes.
Jannings’ lead performance is marvellous. A pompous, proud man who finds himself staring redundancy in the face. Jannings manages to blend this attitude with a rather defeatist message, one that portrays a likeable lead down on his luck. His demotion from head of the door staff takes its toll, and much of the film is orchestrated in a way that showcases the shattered, emotional breakdown of our leading man. His pride wounded, it’s very easy to engage with Janning as he commands the screen so well. The ageism of the supporting characters around him do nothing but bolster this leading role into one that is both commendable and thoroughly emotive.
From a contemporary standpoint, the film holds up relatively well. Obviously a few jolts and jitters appear throughout, but all are forgivable since they don’t have any impact on the heart put into the story. Silent films often depend on very visual, emotive performances, and at times these can come across as over-performed. In this instance however, The Last Laugh manages to keep itself relatively grounded, the acting solid for a great deal of the picture. A few one-scene cast members do bring out the foolhardier, achingly obvious downsides to silent features, but the dominant lead performance covers for them well.
An orchestral soundtrack fits rather nicely with this one, perhaps my favourite to any silent film so far. The Last Laugh isn’t just an important piece of film history, it’s also quite the great drama. Effective in its simple execution as it revolves around the life of a doorman without much else going on in his life. We see flutters of his life outside of his job, but they’re nowhere close to being the focus of this film. A competent drama, one that has the technical strength and narrative flexibility to give audiences a thoroughly engaging time.
