A lot of fun.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

F.W. Murnau didn't have a typical storyline - he could do pure Gothic horror as in Nosferatu, social commentary as in Phantom, fantasy with a religious theme as in Faust, and the redemption of love as in Sunrise. What ties Murnau's work together is its imagery. He excelled at it as few directors ever did. "The Last Laugh" is a tale about an older man who is proud of his position as doorman at a prominent German hotel. One night he has had to carry some heavy luggage as part of his duties and he takes a break. As luck would have it, his supervisor sees him taking this short rest and assumes the worst. The next day the old man is reassigned to the job of washroom attendant. He does his best to hide his change of position from his friends, but they find out anyway. To make matters worse, they assume he's always been lying about his job and that he has thus always been a washroom attendant. At this point you might wonder - why exactly is this film named The Last Laugh? There is a somewhat tacked on ending that is the foundation of the film's title. I won't spoil it for you.

F.W. Murnau's "The Last Laugh" was the climax of Kammerspiel with its outstanding cinematography, composition and naturalist acting. However, due to the director's remarkable production of the darker variant, the film is often mistaken as a masterpiece of expressionism. As an entirety, the film works as a perfect expression of the mentality and mood that prevailed in Germany between WWI and WWII. The injustice and gloomy atmosphere which finally led to Hitler's rise to power. The film was written by Carl Mayer who was not only the father of Kammerspiel but has also often been considered as the most prominent filmic author in the Weimar Republic. Mayer's scripts are literate film poems, all of which are characterized by profound but yet simple psychological structure. For Mayer, film was, first of all, meant to give form to primitive passions. Moreover, Murnau's unique ability to "think and feel directly in images" gives the film a poetic dimension which drills down into the depths of the human soul.The protagonist of "The Last Laugh" is a respectable doorman who enjoys great appreciation at home and neighborhood. On one day, however, he gets a discount to a lavatory cleaner, and experiences a poignant social humiliation. Unfortunately, he is unable to accept the situation and, therefore, sinks into the dim abyss of self-loathe. The scene in which the protagonist loses his job, represented by the doorman coat, tears the viewer's heart apart with its authentic emotion of despair, submission and loss. He becomes a living dead, so to speak. In fact, all the action built around the coat highlights the ever-worsening existence of the protagonist -- on both social and existential levels.Already in the beginning, Murnau defines the contrasts of the class society, commonly for Kammerspiel, through the visual polarization of architecture: the glowing skyscrapers and the luxury hotel (where the doorman works) meet the gruesome aesthetics of the bleak block where the poor live in misery. The latter is definitely a milieu of deceit and exploitation whereas the former consists of elements -- the elevator and the revolving door -- which enable the hectic lifestyle of the hotel's quests. As a matter of fact, the revolving door becomes a fantastic visual motif of the film. It's the quick doorway of the class society which, at random, let's people inside while leaving others outside. It is made very certain that at any moment any one, who has once got in, can, in future, be thrown out.When it comes to progressive cinematography, "The Last Laugh" was a marvelous achievement. Total mobilization of the camera was presented for the first time on the screen hence the film had a tremendous influence on Hollywood cinema. The camera tracks, pans and heels all being. This not only creates brilliant narrative but also makes it possible for the spectator to observe reality from various vantage points. Specifically, the film was revolutionary because the subjective perspective was transformed to the camera-work. Yet, technique is never self-deliberate for it is constantly related to the film's theme of humiliation. During long takes, the camera shares the experience of social abasement with the protagonist. It goes through the emotions of shame and guilt. The camera might even displace the protagonist if Emil Jannings wasn't so outstanding and superb in his performance. As a genre or avantgardist movement, Kammerspiel produced a great amount of touching and progressive films with minimalist settings even if it never reached the aesthetic level of German Expressionism. Nonetheless, visually speaking, Murnau depicts humiliation, pride and shame in an utterly beautiful fashion. To my mind, Murnau even achieves to give the visual form for Marx's idea of the relation between work and human consciousness. And, in this sense, "The Last Laugh" is a poignant analysis of hierarchy in the class society, and a study on the significance and loss of social status -- its authoritarian and destructive impact on both the community and the psyche of the individual. At its heart, "The Last Laugh" is a portrayal of a man's slow and painful process of abasement, sinking lower and lower.

Yep. It's about a doorman. A fat, pompous doorman. A doorman that, because he's getting old, get's demoted to Washroom Attendent. Then he does washroom things. Sounds dry, but it's not.Emil Jannings play the lead (did I mention, doorman?). He carries the entire film in a masterful silent performance. Truly silent; not one dialog card in the entire movie.Direction, camera-work and lighting are all excellent.Could've been a masterpiece if not for a ridiculous deus ex machina ending. Not just a "didn't see that coming" ending, but a ending that is just absurd enough to ruin the integral mood of the first 80 minutes.If you like classic silents you should check this out. But you will leave unsatisfied if you want an emotional payoff.

No wonder Emil Jannings was given the first Best Actor Oscar for his performance in 'The Last Command' (1929) and 'The Way of All Flesh' (1929). He was an amazing actor with an extraordinary range of emotion and character, being at times in this film poignant, humorous, bombastic, but mostly touching, tender and sad-- all so artistically expressed here in the days of silent and 'mime' cinema.Without the distraction of intertitles, this is the 'pure cinema' that displays all the greatness of silent film. It tells a tiny, slight and simple story: with the innovative camera work focusing on a hotel porter being demoted to a men's room attendant due to his old age.As noted by others, the heavy reliance on intertitles to tell the story and telegraph meanings of scenes to follow, so overly used by D. W. Griffith, especially in 'Intolerance,' (1916), and by John Ford in 'The Iron Horse' (1924) really affect the flow and momentum of their films. In 'The Last Laugh,' however, there's nothing to distract you from being drawn into the visual magic of the camera work and the subtle, expressive gestures and movements of Jannings as he changes from the proud, erect doorman to the hunched and enfeebled "Toilet Waiter."We don't have to think it's just "the Germans' love of a uniform" that's going on here. The uniform is a symbol of the work-persona of a career job: and that once the job can no longer be performed, due to the ravages of time, we can only work at simpler tasks; yet, there is still the desire for self respect and dignity in doing one's work that keeps us going. Unfortunately for the porter, who is jeered by his friends and neighbors, he struggles in vain to maintain any shred of dignity and meaning in his life, but finally can not, and so he is ready to (literally) curl up and die, defeated by time, as we all one day must be defeated also.Too much of a downer for the German studio, a 'happy, happy' ending was tacked on to pep up the box office receipts. When this epilogue starts the movie does a 180 degree about face, and you think, "What have they done to my movie? It's ruined!" Then you start thinking that like many modern films, the hero at the real end of the movie will wake up to find that his happy reprieve was just a dream, as, for example, in many films such as in 'Brazil' (1985) '12 Monkeys' (1995), and the latest one 'The Descent' (2005).It doesn't happen. They even changed the title from 'The Last (or Least) Man' to 'The Last Laugh' to punctuate the happy ending. Well, so what. We have to be thankful to be able to watch and relish such an artistic and skillful acting job by one of the great actors of world cinema, shot in revolutionary style by Karl Freund, with fantastic direction by F. W. Murnau, and sets by Edgar G. Ulmer. I'd give it a 10, except that the final dining sequence is too long, broad and too starkly contrastive to what has come before. Jannings tries to make it as if he's remembering his experiences and grateful for his new life by helping those who now walk in his old shoes, but this angle is overshadowed by the shocking juxtapositioning of the epilogue itself. This is a movie that cries out for a 'Director's Cut'! Too bad we won't get one. I give it a 9 and half.