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  • Silence Restored: Three Re-Released Films by F. W. Murnau
  • Ken Calhoon
The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann). F. W. Murnau, dir. Starring Emil Jannings, with an original musical score by Giuseppe Becce, expanded and re-orchestrated. Eureka!, 2008 (1924). 1 DVD + 36-page booklet. £19.99.
Sunrise. F. W. Murnau, dir. Starring Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien. Original Movietone score and alternate Olympic Chamber Orchestra Score. Eureka!, 2011 (1927). Dual format (Blue Ray and DVD) + 20-page booklet. £12.99.
City Girl. F. W. Murnau, dir. Starring Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan, with a new musical score by Christopher Caliendo. Eureka!, 2011 (1930). Dual format + 28-page booklet. £14.99.

The most recently reconstructed version of F. W. Murnau’s The Last Man (1924), released in English originally as The Last Laugh, commences with a cautionary epigraph: “Today you are the first [der Erste], revered by everyone, a minister of state, a millionaire, perhaps even a prince [ein Fürst]. Who knows what you’ll be tomorrow?” Absent from other available variants of the film, these words provide the coordinates of a plot that steers between “first” and “last” while parsing the ambiguity of the latter (“least”? “ultimate”?), which the divergence in titles amplifies. Restored to the film’s opening frames, these lines key the narrative in terms of a lexical tension—one that later reappears in a newspaper notice, which the camera makes legible to the viewer, and which echoes the Biblical assurance that “the last shall be first.”1 This ancient promise is invoked in conjunction with the comedic reversal of fortune heralded by the English title.

The “last man” of the German title is an aging porter, who after years of service at a luxury hotel is reassigned to a subterranean lavatory. Where once he paraded proudly before the hotel’s grand edifice, [End Page 373] he is now reduced to proffering towels and shining shoes. His demotion entails the forfeiture of his imposing uniform, which has long made him a celebrity among his social peers. Divested of his regal prop, the weakened, bent, and conspicuously heavy character, ponderously portrayed by Emil Jannings, projects the burden he has become. This projection becomes literal when the deposed doorman’s stooped and distorted shadow inches cautiously into view, betraying the inner defeat he is at pains to conceal (fig. 1). He manages to smuggle the uniform out of the hotel and wear it home, for a while preserving his status in the eyes of his neighbors, who greet him warmly and readily return his signature salute. They may simply be humoring him, but humor is proper to the genre, the aim of which is inclusion. When, however, his disgrace is finally revealed, acceptance gives way to isolating ridicule, which drives him back to the dismal washroom. The scene darkens on the slumped figure, his bowed head suspended in the halo of a sympathetic nightwatchman’s lamp.


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Fig. 1.

Murnau’s deposed doorman inches into view.

The scene has the feel of finality. Its baroque tenebrism casts the old man as a martyr, his station as a cell. (In earlier shots, sunlight streaming down through a metal grate throws shadows in the pattern of prison bars.) At this point a scrolling, hand-lettered text declares that here, “at the site of his humiliation” (an der Stätte seiner Schmach), the poor fellow would have lived out his waning days in misery. The “author,” however, has taken pity on his forlorn subject and supplied an alternate ending. The improbable outcome is explained by the newspaper notice, mentioned above, which reports that the lavatory attendant has become the accidental heir of a wealthy Mexican who died in his arms. The narrative resumes on a jovial note: the privileged patrons of the hotel’s dining room laugh benevolently, if uncontrollably, as they read the news. In their midst, the now former attendant revels in the fruits of his newfound riches. His excessive feasting, of which the (also former) nightwatchman nervously partakes, is but one expression of the generosity this “last man” embodies—a largesse he presently extends to his surprised successor below stairs.

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