The Last Laugh (1924) is F.W. Murnau’s greatest film second to none, including Sunrise (1927), and stars Germany’s greatest silent era actor, Emil Jannings, in one of his finest and most impressive roles. This film is wonderfully expressionist, and is an even spare but intensely focused film. It surpasses several of the top films that are considered to be Germany’s silent era best. And I think that it would be hard to overstate the importance of The Last Laugh in the history of cinema.

We have here a chance to enjoy an absolutely fantastic performance by Emil Jannings, whose command of his body during his performance is the unmistakable sign of the work of a great artist. The character’s posture, once so upright and proud, changes the moment he sees his replacement and eventually collapses as his pride deflates like a punctured automobile tire. The character becomes almost catatonic. When the uniform coat, the symbol of his position, is being taken off him it is as if it were being wrestled off a corpse. Given the towels, the symbol of his new position, Jannings walks zombie-like as he descends into the men’s washroom, its dark isolation indicative of the darkness that has already crept into his life. He knows he cannot face his family and neighbors, his loss of prestige a great fall among people so easily impressed by the uniform and caring nothing for the man inside.

With Jannings bravura performance, it may be easy to lose sight of the fact that F.W. Murnau’s direction is equally fabulous. While the film is virtually told without intertitles, and that is often one of the first achievements of the film that gets noted, dramatic lighting, great camera moves, and hand-held shots all contribute to impressively to the visual language of cinema. The camera tracking in and out, or the effect achieved for the oppressive feeling of the hotel falling on him after Jannings steals back the uniform. The effects are those of Murnau speaking in an experimental and expressionistic visual voice. For one striking shot Murnau even put the camera on a pulley and rope system that is seen illustrated in the photo gallery section of the DVD. — Carl Bennett

This is the DVD we have been waiting for. This edition is virtually identical to the 1993 Criterion laserdisc, as produced by David Shepard.

The video transfer for this DVD has many of the same qualities as previous editions on home video from Criterion and Kino. The source print is a little blasted out in the highlights, and the overall image detail is a little soft. And since I have never seen another print of this film I cannot say whether or not this is how the film has survived. The video transfer here may well be the same as that produced for the 1993 editions. The source print appears to be a combination of a German 35mm negative and an English language export print. The main titles are German, yet there are insert shots of a decorated cake, a newspaper clipping, and of the letter of demotion in English. The DVD’s supplementary material contains a exerpt from a German print with the original German directorial-intrusion intertitle explaining the film’s epilogue. Also included are several still and production photographs.

A beautiful and appropriately moody score was composed and conducted in 1993 by Timothy Brock. The stereo score, noted as a 2.0 soundtrack, is not discreet and decodes through our review system in pseudo 5.0 surround sound. Honestly, there are a few moments when the members of the Olympia Chamber Orchestra do not quite hit their notes, being a little flat, but not often enough to distract from the film.

Any advance buzz about this disc having DVD mastering problems that you may have heard was correct, but those problems were cleared up before the final release of the DVD. You can purchase this disc with confidence. And we highly recommend this masterpiece of world cinema to anyone. The Last Laugh is a film well worth discovering for yourself, in a reasonably priced DVD edition that is well worth owning.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This new PAL edition features a new, progressive-encoded video transfer of the recent film restoration, with improved English-language subtitle translation of the original German-language intertitles.

The supplementary material includes a 41-minute documentary by Murnau expert Luciano Berriatúa, and a lavishly-illustrated 36-page booklet with writings by film scholars R. Dixon Smith, Tony Rayns, and Lotte H. Eisner.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 2 PAL DVD of this edition from Amazon.co.uk.

This quality PAL edition also contains a documentary, historical information and biographies.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 2 PAL DVD of this edition from Amazon.co.uk.

We have not viewed this edition. And we do not know whether 35mm or 16mm reduction print materials were utilized in the preparation of this edition. We cannot recommend this edition at this time.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

About F.W. Murnau:
The Way to Murnau (2003)

Other silent era Emil Jannings films available on DVD home video:
Eyes of the Mummy (1918)
Faust (1926)
Madame Du Barry (1919)
Othello (1922)
Tartuffe (1925)
Waxworks (1924)

Other German silent era films available on DVD home video:
Anna Boleyn (1920)
Asphalt (1929)
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The Deerslayer and Chingachgook (1920)
Destiny (1921)
Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
Different from the Others (1919)
Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)
The Doll (1919)
Das fidele Gefängnis (1917) with Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Genuine (1920)
The Golem (1920)
The Hands of Orlac (1924)
The Holy Mountain (1926)
I Don’t Want to Be a Man (1920)
The Indian Tomb (1921)
The Joyless Street (1925)
The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)
Metropolis (1927)
Michael (1924)
Die Nibelungen (1924)
Opus I (1921)
Othello (1922)
The Oyster Princess (1919)
Pandora’s Box (1929)
People on Sunday (1929)
Secrets of a Soul (1926)
Sex in Chains (1928)
The Spiders (1919-1920)
Spies (1928)
The Student of Prague (1913)
The Student of Prague (1926)
Sumurun [One Arabian Night] (1920)
The Treasure (1923)
Warning Shadows (1923)
The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929)
The Wildcat (1921)
The Woman in the Moon (1929)

About German filmmakers:
Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin (2006)
Fritz Lang: Circle of Destiny (1998)

Collections and boxsets that include German silent era films:
Fritz Lang Epic Collection (1924-1929)
The F.W. Murnau Collection (1922-1931)
German Expressionism Collection (1920-1926)
German Horror Classics (1920-1924)
Lubitsch in Berlin (1919-1921)
The Masterworks of the German Horror Cinema (1920-1922)