
As he did with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in 1921, Robert E. Sherwood, Algonquin Roundtable regular and the film critic for the first version of Life Magazine, dedicated a full page to F.W. Murnau‘s The Last Laugh, which was released in the United States in January 1925. Sherwood going to bat for a German production against a background of residual post-WW1 jingoism shouldn’t have been much of a surprise–as he mentioned in his Life review for Ernst Lubitsch’s Madame DuBarry four years previously, if the quality was there, that was justification enough–but as it happens sometimes when a writer feels the spark of a crusade, he was just getting warmed up.
“THE LAST LAUGH”
(February 19, 1925)
It’s a good thing for the movie business that Germany wasn’t entirely obliterated in 1918; for German directors, actors and technicians have been responsible, directly or indirectly, for eighty per cent of the progress that the films have made in the past five years. The ideas that have come to us in cans from Berlin have been startlingly new, definitely advanced and, in most cases, genuinely fine. Hollywood has not always admitted openly the enormous value of these ideas, but it has shown the effects of them in countless ways.
The actual menace of German celluloid importations as competitors of the home-grown products has petered out; but we are still at liberty to live and learn and we can learn a great deal from our late neighbors in No Man’s Land. Take, for instance, “The Last Laugh”—-
Here is a marvelous picture–marvelous in its simplicity, its economy of effect, its expressiveness and its dramatic power. The men who were principally involved in its production–Carl Mayer, the author, Emil Jannings, the star, and F. W. Murnau, the director–have demonstrated that thought in Berlin is farther ahead of thought in Hollywood than the intervening seven thousand miles would indicate. These artists tell a humble story, devoid of photographic effects is simply astound flourishes or frills, and tell it entirely in eloquent pictures; there is not a subtitle in the entire film! Never once is the issue in doubt–never once is the motive obscure. We see what the characters are doing, and we know what they are thinking: we are permitted to fill in the whys and the wherefores from our own imaginations–a none too exacting requirement.
“The Last Laugh” is the story of a pompous, strutting old man who gains caste in the humble district in which he lives because he happens to be the commissionaire of the expensive Hotel Atlantic. He wears a gorgeous uniform, fit at least for an Admiral of the Grand Fleet, and as he passes through dingy streets on his way home he is awarded respectful salutes by all. He glories in his circumstance.
But the manager of the Hotel Atlantic notices that the old fellow isn’t quite so spry as he once was; he falters when he lifts heavy trunks from the taxicabs, and he is easily winded. So a new commissionaire is engaged. The unhappy old man is deprived of his uniform, and, as a mark of recognition of his long and faithful service, is given a purely honorary position handing out towels downstairs in the gentlemen’s lavatory!
When the full extent of this frightful fall dawns on the ex-commissionaire, and he realizes that he will be an object of derision in his own home–that there will be no more salutes–there appears in his eyes an expression that might well be stamped on every overworked ego: the fearful, bitter, shaming mark of deflated pride.
Emil Jannings plays this remarkable part with all the fine fervor that is his; but it is not to Jannings so much as to Mayer and Murnau that the real credit belongs. For they have done things with a movie camera that have never been done before. Their manipulation of photographic effects is simply astounding; they have used the lens as a great painter would use a pliant brush that produces broad strokes or fine lines, sharp angles or graceful curves. They have really made a moving picture that is really worthy of the name.
After “The Last Laugh” has run its legitimate course, a fantastic happy ending is tacked on, with the implication: “For those of you who can not take their liquor raw, here is a ginger-ale chaser.” This added conclusion does not affect the main picture in the least, for it is actually no part of it.
I understand that the happy ending was made in Germany solely for the benefit of possible American audiences–a gesture of contempt, and a justifiable one. When Rex Ingram produced “The Prisoner of Zenda” he ended it as Anthony Hope ended it–with a parting of the lovers. But exhibitors complained at this so vociferously that the parting was removed. The same thing happened in “Where the Pavement Ends,” another Ingram picture, in “Blood and Sand,” and in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
I am not trying to argue that the happy ending is inartistic; such a contention is absurd, as various classical examples will instantly prove. But I do argue that the happy ending isn’t, or shouldn’t be, essential. It is forced upon all those who try to write for the screen and its influence is dangerously bad: it makes for obviousness and for that product of a rubber stamp which is known as hokum.
Evidently all movies (to be successful) must dissolve into a roseate sunset, with the pleasant announcement that all’s now right with the world. But is it? I’ve heard different.
AGAIN, “THE LAST LAUGH”
(February 26, 1925)
There are conclusions to be drawn from “The Last Laugh,” which was reviewed with uncharacteristic ecstasy in these columns last week. Such conclusions, were I to pursue them as far as they might lead, would fill ten issues of LIFE from cover to cover, with no room left for the advertisements (which, obviously, would be a very foolish thing).
The fact is this: “The Last Laugh” could never have been produced in this country. Even if there were directors, actors and cameramen qualified for the heroic job (and it is my belief that there are such), there would be no producers with moral courage to back them up. What chance would Karl Mayer, the author, have in a movie studio with a story that included no love interest, no patriotism, no marital entanglements and no particular element of hope? And yet – it seems to me that the story of “The Last Laugh” is the finest dramatic conception that has ever come to the screen.
The movie industry in this country is too heavily saturated with “Yes Men”–time-servers–who believe, and justifiably, that the safety of their miserable jobs depends on their ability to salve the men next higher up. They must kowtow incessantly to jealous stars, pompous directors, cold-blooded distributors and executives whose ideals are cramped by the elastic bands which surround their bank-rolls.
Occasionally some real artist tears away from the stilling influence of the great film art factories, and produces on his own account something genuinely worth while: Charlie Chaplin, above all others, has done this, and so have D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, Rex Ingram, Charles Brabin, Richard Barthelmess, the Rockett Brothers, Harold Lloyd, Robert J. Flaherty, Charles Ray, George Loane Tucker and Buster Keaton. Still more occasionally, intelligent creative effort has been turned loose within the mills themselves—by such men as James Cruze, Herbert Brenon, Frank Lloyd, King Vidor, Victor Seastrom, Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch and William de Mille.
These are exceptions to a sorry rule. With the ubiquitous influence of the box-office and the utter ignorance of the producers (as a class), there is little chance for a good man to get going in Hollywood.
If we can’t afford to originate, then the best we can do is follow in the footsteps of those pioneers who have the courage of their artistic convictions. If we are incapable of producing “The Last Laugh” in this mighty nation, we are at least privileged to profit by it.
THE NEXT TO LAST LAUGH
(May 14, 1925)
The letters are beginning to appear from those who went to see “The Last Laugh” on my earnest recommendation, and who are now hastening to hurl my glowing words back at me, with accumulated interest.
“So this is Art!” they murmur scornfully, implying that they go to the movies to be entertained and there is enough sordidness in life without trying to reflect it on the screen.
My answer to all comers is this: I never said that “The Last Laugh” was Art, (a) because I don’t know what Art is; (b) because I didn’t want to damn this worthy picture with a term that is, in the public’s estimation, opprobrious.
I, too, go to the movies to be entertained, and “The Last Laugh” entertained me. In view of this, what should I have said? I might have explained in my review: “I enjoyed ‘The Last Laugh’ intensely, but I advise you not to see it because you, unlike me, are not qualified to appreciate anything that is genuinely great.”
That would have been charming.
This department is not devoted to the cause of intelligent criticism; it is merely a page upon which the violent opinions of one solitary individual may find expression. I am not conductiong a service for movie exhibitors–telling them what pictures will make money and what will flop–nor am I engaged in the great profitable profession of uplift.
I am here to say what I think (on a catch-as-catch-can, take-it-or-leave-it, the-Marquis-of-Queensberry-be-damned basis), and no one can tell whether I am right or wrong–including myself; in matters of opinion, right and wrong simply don’t exist.
This, of course, is the answer of all highly opinionated individuals to those who dare to disagree, and should be accepted at its face value. I don’t really mean to be cross about it.
Now as to “The Last Laugh”:
It is revolutionary in technique–and by that I mean the style of its construction, direction, photography and performance. Where our American producers must use miles of subtitles, acres of expensive sets and mobs of extras to get over one idea, these Germans have used the simplest and most economical effects of light and shadow.
The public, of course, has been educated to accept the absurd exaggeration of Hollywood, and it can’t fathom this strange simplicity. When I saw Charlie Chaplin’s “A Woman Of Paris,” I heard a young lady in the audience remark, “The trouble with this picture is, the characters ain’t real–they don’t show any emotion.” She was so steeped in the movie tradition that she could think of emotion only in terms of heaving bosoms, quivering lips and cataracts of glycerine tears.
“A Woman of Paris” was a financial failure; so were “Broken Blossoms,” “One Glorious Day,” “Deception,” “The Marriage Circle” and “The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln.” Yet these were all fine pictures–important pictures–and I don’t apologize for praising them.
As I have said many times before, and will continue to say as long as I have this space to fill, the public is never friendly toward pioneers in any field of endeavor.
The public laughed at Columbus when he said the world is round, at Roger Bacon when he postulated the equality of man, at Fulton, and Langley, and John Huss, and Walt Whitman, and John the Baptist and Socrates. The greatest tragedies in history are to be found in the lives of men who were born ahead of their time.
It is always the follow-up men who make the money. Columbus never saw any of the Inca and Aztec treasures that built the Spanish Armada; Lewis and Clark were the first to explore the Northwest, but it was James J. Hill who successfully exploited it; Lee De Forrest and Atwater Kent have made more money out of the radio than Marconi ever dreamed of; and I understand that H.C. Witwer’s income is larger than Ring Lardner’s.
So don’t crow too loudly because “The Last Laugh” is failing to earn fortunes at the box-office. Wait until we have had a chance to observe its effect on our more practical American producers–and then decide whether or not it was worth doing.
–R.E. Sherwood
Meanwhile, Life theater reviewer and fellow Algonquin Roundtable charter member Robert Benchley had obviously read all of this, probably heard even more of it up close, and couldn’t resist giving his friend a well-placed elbow to the ribs.
A GENERAL READJUSTMENT
(March 5, 1925)
On the evening of the opening of “Cape Smoke,” we finished dinner early, and, tossing off a cordial, decided to spend the hour before theatre-time slumming in the movies watching “The Last Laugh.”
As a result of seeing “The Last Laugh” before “Cape Smoke,” we are now completely at sea about everything. Our whole system of dramatic valuations has gone to smash. This movie made the subsequent example of the theatre’s art seem cramped, tawdry, and old-fashioned. It made us feel that in a hundred years there will be nothing but movies, and that the spoken drama will then occupy the place that the Punch and Judy show now holds.
Of course, “Cape Smoke” is not a fair example of what the theatre can do, although it is by no means any worse than most of its genre. It has its moments, and an occasional not inconsiderable kick. But it does embody all that is clumsy and phony about the spoken word and fabricated scenery (very well fabricated in this particular case), while “The Last Laugh” embodies all that is easy and poignant in the unspoken word. (There is not a subtitle in “The Last Laugh.” Not one.)
We are told that “The Last Laugh” is by no means typical of movie art. That makes no difference. Here is a movie which can make almost any play seem like the markings on a Cro-Magnon cave wall. It may be the only movie which has done so, but the fact that it can be done should be a warning to playwrights and actors. We had much the same ominous feeling about written humor after seeing Buster Keaton in “Our Hospitality.” If the movies can capture humor as it was captured in that picture, and, with no evident effort, express it as it was there expressed, then we old writing-boys had better pack up our leaden words and wooden phrases and learn a new trade. Following our experience at that picture, we secretly began learning glass-blowing, and are ready any day now to duck.
–Robert Benchley
Benchley eventually became a screen personality himself, although he waited for the talkies before he stepped in front of the camera, when more words were in demand. In reviewing the Benchley short “The Sex Life Of A Polyp” in 1928, Sherwood noted, “I hope the money and the fame won’t go to his head. There are plenty of good actors in the world, but all too few good dramatic critics.”
Back on the art-vs.-commerce battlefront of 1925, Sherwood continued to push for The Last Laugh in his capsule descriptions of current films, although his defeated “The public be damned” of June 11th indicated that he knew his side was on the losing end.
And then came the harshest blow…
THE LAST WORD
(June 25, 1925)
Word comes from Hollywood that the Universal Pictures Corp. has engaged Walter Anthony to write subtitles for “The Last Laugh.”
I understand that, after he has completed this great task, the British Government is to give Mr. Anthony a job in Bermuda, painting the lilies.
–R.E. Sherwood
The next week’s capsule review: “I’ve stopped recommending this since I heard that it has been equipped with subtitles.”
(edited June 28, 2021 for a “proper” ending)