Mel Brooks talking about the great Sid Caesar.
His advice,”steal from the best” and then mentions The Last Laugh.
Photographed by Karl Freund ASC, who later was one of the first television DPs on I Love Lucy, but more on that later.
SYNOPSIS
One of the crowning achievements of the German expressionist movement, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s THE LAST LAUGH stars Emil Jannings as an aging doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of the duties and uniform which had for years been the foundation of his happiness and pride. Through Jannings’ colossal performance, THE LAST LAUGH becomes more than the plight of a single doorman, but a mournful dramatization of the frustration and anguish of the universal working class. Restored in 2003 by Luciano Berriatúa and the Friedrich-Wilhelm- Murnau-Stiftung, this Kino edition is the definitive version of a silent masterwork, presented with unprecedented clarity and a new orchestral recording of the original 1924 score.
THE LAST LAUGH (Der letzte Mann)
Germany 1924 90 Min. B&W 1.33:1
Directed by F.W. Murnau
Screenplay by Carl Mayer
Photographed by Karl Freund
“Rightly praised by Alfred Hitchcock as ‘almost the perfect film.'” – Tim Purtell, Entertainment Weekly
I recommend that you get the restored version I saw at the New Beverly a few years ago.