General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Last Laugh

The Last Laugh (German: Der letzte Mann, "The Last Man") is a 1924 German silent film directed by F. W. Murnau, in which an aging hotel doorman played by Emil Jannings is demoted to washroom attendant and collapses under the loss of the uniform and status that defined his life. Produced by Erich Pommer for UFA from a screenplay by Carl Mayer, with cinematography by Karl Freund, it is celebrated for its mobile "unchained camera," its near-total avoidance of intertitles, and its status as a central work of Weimar cinema.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Der letzte Mann ("The Last Man"); The Last Laugh is the American release title³
Premiere	German theatrical release 23 December 1924²
Principal credits	Directed by F. W. Murnau; produced by Erich Pommer; written by Carl Mayer; cinematography by Karl Freund; production design by Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig; original score by Giuseppe Becce¹^•⁴
Story	The doorman of a luxury Berlin hotel, proud of his brass-buttoned uniform, is demoted to washroom attendant when age slows him, and loses the respect of family and neighbors⁵
Technical landmark	First film in which a mobile camera was thoroughly integrated into production; the "unchained camera" (entfesselte Kamera) became a permanent part of film technique³^•⁶
Intertitles	Nearly none; original German prints had about fifteen, and the story is told through pantomime and camera work³
Canon standing	Ranked =243 in the 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time critics' poll¹

Spoilers

Story and style

The doorman of the elegant Atlantic Hotel takes palpable pride in his position and his brass-buttoned uniform, greeting the rich and famous before the revolving door. When old age makes it hard for him to carry luggage, the hotel manager reassigns him to the washroom, and the loss of the uniform destroys his standing with neighbors and family, who had revered it as a symbol of authority.⁵^•⁷ Siegfried Kracauer, a sociologist, noted that the tenants, the women above all, worship the uniform as an emblem of ultimate authority and welcome the chance to worship it.⁷

The unchained camera. Murnau, Freund, and Mayer added a new dimension to cinema's expressiveness by unchaining the camera. The film opens with a shot that descends in an elevator into the hotel lobby, then travels across the floor mounted on a bicycle steered by Freund himself. For the doorman's drunken dream sequence, Freund strapped the camera to his chest and the batteries to his back, stumbling in mock inebriation to capture a shot lasting over a minute on screen.³^•⁸ Murnau had used panning shots in Nosferatu (1922) and cameras had been moved briefly off their tripods elsewhere, but this was the first time a mobile camera was thoroughly integrated into the production of a movie.³ The film also uses image distortion and subjective angles, such as a grotesquely elongated face seen from the doorman's point of view as he imagines a neighbor's wrath.⁸

A film without words. The film is one of the most truly silent of silent films because it dispenses with printed intertitles, telling the story entirely through pantomime and the language of the camera. Original German prints contained about fifteen intertitles, still vastly fewer than the norm, though their provenance has been questioned; the film's single significant intertitle introduces the epilogue.⁹^•³

The ending

The film closes with a satirical epilogue, introduced by the one intertitle, in which the doorman improbably inherits a fortune and laughs at the hotel's guests. Film historians believe the happy ending resulted from pressure from UFA, while Jannings claimed in his autobiography that he had personally requested a new ending. Murnau played the epilogue as belabored farce, a grotesque parody of a studio happy ending.³ The American title, The Last Laugh, reflects the upbeat coda, while the original German title, Der letzte Mann, characterizes the porter adrift in the modern world.³

Production

The film was shot in spring and summer 1924 at Ufa's studios in Berlin-Tempelhof and on the backlot of Babelsberg near Potsdam, where Herlth and Röhrig designed an enormous outdoor set with the corner facade of the hotel jutting into what appeared to be a major metropolitan crossing, conceived for the moving camera.¹⁰ Producer Erich Pommer, under pressure after German currency stabilization opened the market to more Hollywood films, asked the team to "invent something new, even if it's crazy"; the 1924 partnership of Murnau, Mayer, Freund, and the architects Herlth and Röhrig has been called the most artistically fruitful partnership of German silent film.¹¹

Mayer conceived the film as the third part of a trilogy with Scherben and Sylvester, post-Expressionist chamber plays (intimate dramas with few characters in confined settings) made with director Lupu Pick, who had been slated to direct The Last Laugh until he and Mayer fell out. Some critics gave much of the credit for the film's innovations to Mayer, Germany's leading screenwriter of the era; Freund praised him with the remark, "A script by Carl Mayer is already a film."³

Reception and influence

The film was a major critical and financial success and brought Murnau international acclaim; the critic Paul Rotha wrote that it "definitely established the film as an independent medium of expression," saying everything that had to be said was said entirely through the camera.⁷^•¹² Alfred Hitchcock praised it as "almost the perfect film."¹³ It has remained securely in the canon of silent cinema, cited for its mobile camera, its near-elimination of intertitles, and Jannings's performance, and it demonstrated that cinema could tell a complete, emotionally complex narrative through visual means alone.⁶

Its influence on Hollywood was direct and traceable. Murnau and Freund both moved to the United States, and the unchained camera became a staple of nearly every major Hollywood film of the late 1920s, especially after Murnau went to Fox to make Sunrise (1927).¹⁴ The film is routinely invoked as a key influence on subjective camera, on the integration of camera movement with character psychology, and on the ideal of "pure cinema."⁶

Jannings's later career. Emil Jannings (1884–1950) made the film at the top of his form as one of the world's greatest stars, won the Academy Award for The Last Command (1928), and played Marlene Dietrich's admirer in The Blue Angel (1930). He embraced the rise of the Nazis, made films supporting them, and fell into disgrace after the war.⁹

Restoration and running times

Restored editions differ in length, a common situation for silent films assembled from different prints and projection speeds. BFI lists a running time of 108 minutes,¹ Kino Lorber's restored edition and the Internet Archive print list 90 minutes,¹³^•⁵ and Roger Ebert's review gives 77 minutes.⁹ Kino Lorber's definitive edition was mastered from a 2K restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung and pairs the original Giuseppe Becce score with a new score by the Berklee College of Music.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Early and silent cinema › Silent feature films › Released 1914 to 1926

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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