The Last Laugh (1924)

Interesting facts

The Last Laugh is a 1924 German silent film directed by German director F. W. Murnau from a screenplay written by Carl Mayer. The film stars Emil Jannings and Maly Delschaft.

Production

Director F. W. Murnau was at the height of his film career in Germany and had high ambitions for his first film with UFA. He stated that "All our efforts must be directed towards abstracting everything that isn't the true domain of the cinema.

The film was shot entirely at the UFA Studios. Murnau and cinematographer Karl Freund used elaborate camera movements for the film, a technique later called "entfesselte Kamera" (unchained camera). In one scene a camera was strapped to Freund's chest as he rode a bicycle into an elevator and onto the street below. In another scene a camera is sent down a wire from a window to the street below, and later reversed in editing.

Murnau noted that the story was absurd on the grounds that "everyone knows that a washroom attendant makes more than a doorman." The signs in the film are written in an imaginary language that Alfred Hitchcock took as Esperanto.

There were three different versions of the film, for German, American and international audiences. While European markets retained the meaning of the original German title (The Last Man) on its initial release, the English-speaking countries opted for the more optimistic Laugh title.

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