Critics reviews

Should the porter suddenly lose this uniform and the nebulous prestige it affords, what would become of him, not to mention that society in which so much can rest on so unstable a thing as pride? This seems to be the question at the sad yet sour heart of Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, F.W. Murnau, 1924), a film suffused with game-changing innovations and mixed sympathies.

Murnau and Jannings viscerally define the porter's mindscape, exploring his fantasies and shifting emotional states. Jannings is more than formidable enough to hold up to the formal trickery that Murnau and Freund employ throughout the film.

Widely cited as the first film to employ a dolly shot, F.W. Murnau's THE LAST LAUGH is much more than a formal milestone. It is, among other things, an inspired fusion of expressionism and psychological realism, employing a bounty of stylistic innovations to create a three-dimensional portrait of a working-poor hotel doorman, the sort of neglected urban figure who rarely assumes the central position in works of narrative art.

Murnau was filming in a democracy, albeit a fledgling one, and his vision of inequality and cavalier authority—of the vast contrast between the individual, with his vast dreams and fragile dignity, and the overwhelming, impersonal, implacable force of a society burdened with unquestioned traditions and ruthless habits—virtually shrieks with warnings of impending disaster.