Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A testament to the varied brilliance of Weimar cinema, 5 Jan 2006
This is undoubtedly one of the very best films of the 1920s. I watched Der letzte Mann after viewing Faust, Nosferatu and Tartuffe, looking for modes of Expressionism and trying to grasp what made Murnau tick. Der letzte Mann is very different from Murnau's most famous work. There are nods to Expressionism, but the truly pioneering aspect of Der letzte Mann is Karl Freund's 'unchained camera'. Murnau developed camera tricks here in 1924 that would be repeated nearly fifty years later by Martin Scorsese in Mean Streets: the dizzying, subjective camera that demonstrates Emil Janning's enebriation. For me, this is the most virtuosic passage of the film - but other 'tricks', such as the impression of a building falling upon Emil Jannings and the camera panning in through a window, show a tremendous knowledge of the early 'cinema of attractions' as well as a progressive desire to advance the syntax of the film.Everything came together in Der letzte Mann. Arguably the greatest director of Weimar Germany, the most successful producer, the most accomplished cameraman and the most famous actor's face. Der letzte Mann marks a summit of an incredibly exciting period in the history of film, and exhibits the fact that Murnau was not restricted in his thinking to shadows and fog (Tartuffe, too, is a very different piece from Nosferatu). Anyone interested should read more recent studies on German cinema in 1920s such as Thomas Elsasser's. The Weimar Cinema has recently been reappraised for what it was - a broad range of talents converging on many different subjects and forms well ahead of their time. Der letzte Mann, more ably than any other film of the era, demonstrates this in exhilarating fashion.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Take away a man's uniform - what is left?", 12 Mar 2009
Appearances can be deceptive. If you were to judge by appearances, this would seem to be one of Emil Jannings' ever-popular exercises in onscreen humiliation (The Blue Angel, The Last Command) - and no one did humiliation like Jannings, the man with the most expressive back and shoulders in cinema. A huge worldwide star in the silent era and the first Best Actor Oscar winner, his career and reputation subsequently marred by the Nazi films he made during the war, the film has survived its star's disgrace to become one of the enduring greats. Its story may be simple, but the execution is absolutely extraordinary, the film still seeming extraordinarily fresh and modern even today - a film with an energy and a beating heart that makes for an invigorating piece of pure cinema.
Adapted from Nikolai Gogol's The Coat and a Broadway adaptation by Charles W. Goddard (the film's title actually translates from German as The Last Man, as in The Bible's `the last shall be first'), it taps into both the Germans' love of uniforms and the universal tendency to judge others by their appearance. Jannings plays the much-respected chief porter of the prestigious Hotel Atlantic. He may live in a neighbourhood not many steps above a slum, but as long as he has his grandiose military-style porter's uniform, he has the respect of everyone in his neighbourhood. It is the uniform, not money, that is the source of his power and authority, but when he is demoted after a humiliatingly pathetic display of physical strength shows his age, he is stripped of the overcoat like a disgraced officer being cashiered before the entire regiment and sent to work as a lavatory attendant instead, the lowliest position in the entire hotel. At first he attempts to hide his dishonour, but once his secret is out his neighbours' attitudes change almost immediately from love and admiration to contempt as he becomes a joke in their eyes. The only compassion he receives is from the night watchman in a moving drunken scene that you suspect everyone but Jannings wanted for the finale.
Yet far from this being a case of just deserts, Jannings' protagonist is a decent man for all his surface pomposity. All he has is the respect his position bestows on him, and once that is gone it is genuinely tragic to see this huge man shrink into himself. It's that human aspect that ultimately is the film's greatest achievement: it's as emotional and moving as it is technically innovative. And the film is incredibly innovative.
An attempt to make a silent film with no captions, the film tells its story with images and body language, with only a shot of a letter and a very reluctant onscreen excuse for the unbelievable epilogue imposed on him by his star breaking the flow of images (Murnau passed on the opportunity to direct The Blue Angel, fearing that Jannings would once again demand a happy ending: Jannings even suggested his Last Laugh co-star Molly Delschart for the Dietrich role!). Boasting the top talent in German cinema of the day (a screenplay by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari's Carl Mayer, produced by Eric Pohmer, magnificent production design by future cult director Edgar G. Ulmer), a huge 1.6m DM budget that allowed magnificent sets of the grand hotel and the beautifully rendered slum, and a lavish 180-day shooting schedule that allowed director F.W. Murnau a level of perfectionism rare even now let alone in 1924, the film is the best and most groundbreaking example of what became known as the `unchained camera' technique. And the camerawork is very much a star of the film. Few directors, sound or silent, understood the language of the camera as well as Murnau: Scorsese's been openly stealing from him for decades. You could even make a case that all modern cinema flows from this source, with many of the techniques we take for granted today being tried out here. The camera is rarely still in many of the major sequences, the hotel lobby filled with crane and dolly shots (the later reputedly invented for the film), Karl Freund's striking camerawork at times even assuming the perspective and failing eyesight of its tragic hero.
Thankfully the film has received some of the attention it deserves, with a fine transfer keeping the excellent 1924 score by Giuseppe Becce, the DVD also includes an excellent documentary detailing the differences between the different versions (three were shot, one for Germany, the others for export overseas, with many subsequent re-edits happening to both), how the forced perspective sets were designed via production sketches and blueprints and even breakdowns on individual shots. The DVD even tells you what film stock and cameras were used! Very highly recommended.
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