14 November 2007
F.W. Murnau was without doubt one of the great visionaries of silent cinema. You want proof? Go take a look at Nosferatu (1922) or Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1929) or Faust (1926), each of them deserving of the oft-overused term Masterpiece. And yet his 1924 film Der letzte Mann (known widely as The Last Laugh but translating literally as The Last Man) is regarded by some as the greatest of all the director's works.
The film tells the story of an elderly hotel doorman (Emil Jennings) who takes pride in his position and his uniform. One night he is taking a rest after carrying a particularly heavy suitcase a brief pause that is mistaken by a manager to be an abandonment of his duties. The following morning he arrives at work to find that a new doorman has been installed and that he has been demoted to the menial position of washroom attendant. Reduced to polishing the tiles beneath a sink in the gents' lavatory and towelling the hands of Berlin's most vulgar barons, the doorman soon uncovers the ironic underside of old-world hospitality, and one day his fate unexpectedly changes...
Der letzte Mann is a genuinely landmark film, telling its story in a purely visual manner without the inclusion of intertitles or dialogue and employing a wide range of cinematic techniques to tell its story, master cinematographer Karl Freund's sometimes mobile camera in particular seeming decades ahead of it time.
The film has now been announced for a January 2008 release by Eureka! as part of the Masters of Cinema series, with the following announced specifications:
- New, progressive encode of the recent, magnificent film restoration;
- Der letzte Mann - The Making Of - documentary by Murnau expert Luciano Berriatúa [41:00];
- Lavishly illustrated 36-page booklet with writing by film scholars R. Dixon Smith, Tony Rayns and Lotte H. Eisner;
- More!
Der letzte Mann will be released by Eureka! on 21st January 2008 at the RRP of £19.99. |
