Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924)

[denti alligator]

I'm teaching this film right now to Freshmen. It's a perfect film to illustrate various kinds of shots, the innovation of the "mobile camera," and Murnau's obsession with detail (where things take on symbolic value even as they are shown to be nothing more than mere objects). It also usefully juxtaposes "classic" expressionist features with a sober, almost documentary feel.

My students reacted very strongly to something that I hadn't really considered before, namely the way the doorman's neighbors and family respond to his demotion. My student found it completely unbelievable that those who respected him would turn on him with malicious laughter instead of pitying him or even comforting him.

And they're right. This is a part of the film that is jarring. The women's laughter (filmed with their disembodied heads superimposed over the courtyard where they live) takes on grotesquely exaggerated proportions. This scene especially feels like it's a part of the doorman's dream.

The unreal laughter returns in the contrived last sequence (which my students also didn't like), and of course the English title picks this up: The Last Laugh. Does this title alter the film (in the same way the ending does)? (Does anyone know if this ending was originally planned?) How do others react to this laughter, and to the "happy end"? Does it destroy the profound sense of pity that the penultimate sequence instills? Or are we never really allowed to feel pity, because Jannings's character is too pathetic?

One of my students cleverly suggested reading the film as an allegory for Germany's defeat in WWI and its subsequent humiliation and suffering. But that reading--while appealing and even convincing--removes it too far from what I feel it does so well, which is to portray an individual's downfall (whatever it may consist in...).

How do you--Schreck, I'm thinking of you!--react to this strange film?

[Michael Kerpan]

As I understand it, Murnau actually wanted the (slap-in-your-face, cynical) second happy ending -- it was not imposed.

As to the neighbors -- do we _know_ they were malicious -- or do we only know that our hero subjectively experienced derision from all around him. The derisive neighbors are not necessarily any more objectively real than the buildings which seem ready (soemtimes) to fall over and crush him.

[Matt]

...or do we only know that our hero subjectively experienced derision from all around him. The derisive neighbors are not necessarily any more objectively real than the buildings which seem ready (soemtimes) to fall over and crush him.

Yes, this is how I always understood it. We experience his demotion from his point of view and so their laughter is exaggerated because the hero feels it so keenly. Objectively, they may not even be laughing at him at all, but he may feel as if everyone is laughing at him.

[HerrSchreck]

In late 04 I stayed w my mom who was recovering from heart surgery and this was among some of the films I showed her, and she reacted the same way to the viciousness of the derision by not only the neighbors but the family.. she found it so merciless that it registered as completely unbelievable.

This is a perfect example of the intervening years changing culture so drastically that what passed as unflicnhing profundity back in the 20's registers in todays world as monstrous cruelty. First and foremost the film illustrates the hugely important social element of The Uniform. Germans of the time were fond of regimentation, thus symbols of participating in a regimentation, whereby a uniform signals to the denizens of a Berlin backstreet slum at the height of the depression something the spectators hugely admire: Jannings is surrounded by individuals yearning for work, work that is neatly organized, work that not only gives the individual a place in a well-oiled regimentation but a uniform that proudly signals his place in it. This goes triple if the uniform has a military look to it, is sharp, crisp, looks cool and is worn well. On his block, in front of all the folks who behold him, it's like being a celebrity-- he's an automatically more important person than they are, they long for what he's living, and instinctively look up to him as the authority in their midst. Think in terms of a peasant throwing themselves in the dirt bowing before a samurai. Jannings is the samurai, and the folks on the block are the peasantry. His character urges this on via his obvious pride, military bearing, saluting, and the denizens respond in kind, stiffening up with big humble smiles, glad to look up to him, etc. It's perhaps hard to understand in today's far more politically correct culture, but he was much much more than just a chubby old smiley dude in a double breasted coat back then.

Therefore, when it turns out that, without any segue or warning whatsoever, the news is he's a toilet attendant.. the laughter comes before they know the details or how it happened. Schadenfreude city. Imagine courting a woman who led you to believe was the niece of a king or queen, whereby you went thru all the formal rituals of giving her expensive gifts, chaparoning, things you would have never done with a typical petit-bourgoise... and then you find out she's really been fresh out of a homeless shelter all along, doesn't even know who her parents are, stuck someone up for clothing money and concocted this whole story which she used to keep you in a condition of exaggerated respect and reverence-rituals which you never dispense to folks around you... she put worshipful stars in your eyes.

Not knowing the truth, this is basically how the neighbors feel. Nothing is sweeter for low folks than seeing some highminded individual whose ass you had to kiss take the long hard fall. They feel that Jannings character has been lying to them because he thinks he's better than them, and couldn't stand being one of them... and now they feel he's even lower than them because of it.

The fact that this isn't true at all is the awful pathos of the story-- that they can't see what we've been seeing.. that the dude is a good guy, who is such a good loyal worker that his sense of self esteem takes shape when in the uniform, and falls to shit when it's taken from him. WE know he hasn't been hustling anybody, lying about his job, etc. That not only does he have to deal with the crushing defeat of the demotion but on top of it his neighbors think he's been a lying piece of shit who thinks who the hell is is. As the one title card says, on top of all this, even worse-- this sort of process of diminishing usefulness of a laborer via aging is common, universal... and azll the guy has to look forward to now is dying. The mean trick of getting old.

As to the ending I know it was between Pommer, Mayer, and Murnau, and I think-- but don't quote me on it I'd need to go back & check-- it was Carl Mayer who desperately wanted to end the film on a fadeout on Jannings in the lavatory, and make the godawful truth of life apparent in a merciless ending, but Pommer refused, thinking it was just too severe a cinematic stew owing to all the other elements in the picture. So the ending was a compromise, whereby the happy ending was put on, but with the qualifier that the old man SHOULD NOT have anything to look forward to but death in the real world, and a general silly sense that this was an impossible Hollywood ending being right there out in the open.

[Guest]

Alfred Hitchcock remarked in the book Hitchcock-Truffaut that he considered The Last Laugh to be one of the best films ever made. Giving the fact that Murnau was a leftest, in The Last Laugh he tried to establish an international language of films, with the idea of a silent cinema without inter-titles, one which would make meaning through purely visual means.

From Hitchcock-Truffaut:

T. I suppose that one's talent was measured by the ability to make a picture requiring the fewest titles?

H. Exactly.

T. Still, weren't many of the scripts adapted from stage plays?

H. I made a silent film, The Farmer's Wife, a play that was all dialogue, but we tried to avoid using titles and, wherever possible, to use the pictorial expression instead. I suppose the only film made without any titles at all was The Last [Man], with Emil Jannings.

T. A great picture, one of Murnau's best.

H. They were making it while I worked at UFA. In that film Murnau even tried to establish a universal language by using a kind of Esperanto. All the street signs, the posters, the shop signs, were in this synthetic language.

[HerrSchreck]

That, among all of the genuine innovations in that film, is the single red herring. The credit belongs to Carl Mayer, who created a number of films prior to the LETZE MANN like SYLVESTER, BACKSTAIRS, SCHERBEN, which were free of intertitles. Grune's STREET mostly intertitle free, as was WARNING SHADOWS-- all of the aforementioned came prior to LETZE.

[Ledos]

Plus Der letzte Mann wasn't free from intertitles - there was one. A very important one setting the tone for the ironic ending.

[HerrSchreck]

Although I must say I always registered the strange signs in the distance and wondered what the hell they were, i e the odd language they seemed to be in, neither english or german. I always just sorta took it as Murnau's way of blurring the details to keep them out of the forefront-- i e if your mind can't register the name, it simply becomes unimportant in the frame and your mind ceases to seek it out, i e a compositional device a la forced/false perspective. Like using the midgets in SUNRISE. Murnau was a master of composing in depth and was always working the elements deep in his frames every bit as much as those in the forefront. One word for the ultimate example of this-- FAUST.

I think that's a fascinating thing the way he tried to create this sort of "visual esperanto" (even though he had to do away w the idea when creating the name of the hotel Jannings character works for).... too bad he & Leslie Stevens couldn't have collaborated on INCUBUS. Though the visual beauty of that film is certainly connected to the long string of b/w horror films back to the Universals of the 30's, which in turn are directly connected to the gothic looking films of Murnau & Paul Leni.

[redbill]

The unreal laughter returns in the contrived last sequence (which my students also didn't like), and of course the English title picks this up: The Last Laugh. Does this title alter the film (in the same way the ending does)? (Does anyone know if this ending was originally planned?)

I just watched this for this first time a week or so ago. And from what I've read about it in Eisner's book the movie (and Mayer's original script did end) was originally supposed to end with his death in the bathroom. The last sequence was forced upon him them. The German title makes more sense this way as The Last Man...

[Ledos]

According to the documentary by Luciano Berriatúa on Transit's DVD the ending was suggested by Emil Jannings and supported by F.W. Murnau.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The article was changed yesterday (to add it to the "Drama films" category). The bit about the ending has been in the article for over four years, so chances are it'll never be footnoted.

[HerrSchreck]

A documentary on the making of the film wherein the exaggerated importance of the uniform in German society is noted. Is this on any DVDs? Berriatua maybe?

[Tommaso]

It looks like it's a Spanish language version of the documentary which is one the Transit/Eureka release, though I cannot check just now (being at work). But the initial interview with the uniform talk is quite familiar.

[Ledos]

Yup, that's Berriatúa's documentary. It's available on Transit's DVD with Spanish or German narration and English subtitles (probably Eureka too but I don't have that one).

The part where he says the ending was Jannings' idea appears exactly two minutes into the documentary. I suppose Berriatúa's two-volume book on Murnau, Los proverbios chinos de FW Murnau, would cast more light on this but alas, it hasn't been translated into any language I'm familiar with.

[skuhn8]

I saw this last night for the first time. On the big screen no less. Interesting version, certainly not the recent restoration. 77 minutes and no tinting. Furthermore, it had Hungarian opening/closing credits circa 1950's with a brief text explanation of its importance in the history of cinema. Those text elements that you would expect to be in German (happy ending title card, newspaper article) were translated into Hungarian. But the wedding cake was strangely in English: "We welcome our wedding guests". So perhaps this was an English sourced print? It looked convincing insofar as it was not titled text but actual frosting on what looks to be an actual cake.

It was great to see this with an audience. I was surprised; it was valentine's day yet there were young girls dressed like they were going to a rave after the film, lots of university types and about half the audience middled aged Hungarians. But I never knew how funny this film would be. The somewhat bombastic soundtrack (probably also from the fifties) provoked some of the response but it was a very attentive audience. Definitely my best Murnau viewing experience; and perhaps my favorite Murnau film to date.

[colinr0380]

Not knowing the truth, this is basically how the neighbors feel. Nothing is sweeter for low folks than seeing some highminded individual whose ass you had to kiss take the long hard fall. They feel that Jannings character has been lying to them because he thinks he's better than them, and couldn't stand being one of them... and now they feel he's even lower than them because of it.

The fact that this isn't true at all is the awful pathos of the story-- that they can't see what we've been seeing.. that the dude is a good guy, who is such a good loyal worker that his sense of self esteem takes shape when in the uniform, and falls to shit when it's taken from him. WE know he hasn't been hustling anybody, lying about his job, etc. That not only does he have to deal with the crushing defeat of the demotion but on top of it his neighbors think he's been a lying piece of shit who thinks who the hell is is. As the one title card says, on top of all this, even worse-- this sort of process of diminishing usefulness of a laborer via aging is common, universal... and azll the guy has to look forward to now is dying. The mean trick of getting old.

That is a great description - though not just seeing a highminded invidiual take a fall but there is a kind of schadenfreude in dragging someone who had the temerity to try and escape from the box they had been placed in back down into the muck (and maybe lower!)

The way they treat him seems to me to be much more a reflection of their impressions turning out to be false and their not being able to cope with the possibility that they might have been the ones with a skewed view projecting onto the world rather than having been the victims of a fraudster. It says a lot about the spurious significance of a uniform that it commands 'fake' respect (awe of the wearer's power; fear of being targeted by a 'superior' person; the wish to be close to that person to gain associated privileges) that as soon as its reputation is revealed to not command such authority that it makes the wearer subject to supposedly legitimate abuse. (I found it interesting that, although the subject matter is completely different, the best scenes in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam have some of that awe/fear projection onto the outsider with a different look and how that can allow people to find easy solutions of blame to unsolvable problems)

What makes the film so tragic for me is not just the circumstances the hotel porter is reduced to (though it is always terrible seeing someone who took pride in their work denigrated) but that he showed through his pride that he actually showed a genuine concern about what his peers thought of him and was a decent open person, which unfortunately laid him bare to complete destruction when whims changed.

The uniforms and mores may change but that is one lesson sadly that still seems relevant.

[lady wakasa]

This is one of my favorite films, period, and one of the films that makes Murnau one of my favorite five directors.

Not knowing the truth, this is basically how the neighbors feel. Nothing is sweeter for low folks than seeing some highminded individual whose ass you had to kiss take the long hard fall. They feel that Jannings character has been lying to them because he thinks he's better than them, and couldn't stand being one of them... and now they feel he's even lower than them because of it.

This is how I always read the neighbors' / family's reaction - that he'd been strutting around, almost "Big Man on Campus"- like, and it'd all been a sham in the end. And that overall he didn't really feel that way (he was more interested in being a good person and a good provider for his family), but he'd bought into it just a little bit.

If I remember correctly, the daughter didn't feel that way at all, and didn't want to cut him off.

Also, I never saw the Esperanto thing before - I'm going to have to check that out...