Der Letzte Mann (1924) - film review

For the old porter at the Hotel Atlantis, his job is the main pleasure in his life.  It brings him into contact with the highest in high society and his smart uniform affords him status, the respect of his family and neighbours.  So, when, one day, he is demoted to a mere lavatory attendant, his shame and despair are more than he can bear.   He steals his former uniform to maintain the pretence that he is still, in his mind at least, a man of stature – but all too soon his deceit is discovered.  Could Fate offer him a happier outcome than the one he seems destined for?

Murnau’s touching parable of decline and fall, an obvious metaphor for German society after World War I, is widely regarded as a masterpiece of German expressionism.   Emil Janning’s larger-than-life portrayal of a man whose dreams are brought crashing down is hugely poignant, one of the highpoints in the career of one of Germany’s greatest acting talents.   The real star of the film, however, is the camera, in the hands of  Karl Freud, a genius cinematographer of expressionist cinema.  Freud’s camerawork broke new ground (and was in fact decades ahead of its time) in films such as this and it his unique visionary talent which most defines Der Letzte Mann, making it a work of sublime artistic genius.

A film which almost bursts off the screen in a kaleidoscope of cinematographic magic, Der Letzte Mann pushes the art of cinema into new territory and is a mesmerising work from start to finish.  As if borne by wings, the camera moves with a grace and daring fluidity which is rarely seen in cinema.  It constantly roves around the busy world in which the hotel porter lives, zooming in on disapproving faces, flying back to give us a sense of scale and grandeur, and then propelling us into the porter’s fanciful and hugely traumatised inner world.  The movement of the camera allows us to experience the porter’s moments of delirium, his turbulent mood swings, with a force and eloquence that has to be seen to be believed.  With no dialogue at all, the film relies entirely on visual images to tell its story – which it does with remarkable skill and imagination.

Allegedly at the request of his producers, Murnau was obliged to give the film a happy ending – a virtually impossible feat, you would have thought, given the film’s leanings towards social realism.  It looks as if Murnau thought it was a daft idea too.  Rather than attempt to give the film a convincing ending, he tacked on a farcical epilogue which, he makes clear in the film’s sole inter-title, is not the kind of denouement that you would ever find in real life.    The film should have ended with the porter in disgrace, reduced to a lamentable state of humiliation and rejection.  Instead, we are treated to a bizarre comic finale, which is so absurdly over the top that it just has to be interpreted as a parody of a happy ending.

Although this comic ending is apparently at odds with the main part of the film, breaking the spell of realism in a split second, it seems – inexplicably – to work rather well.  It reflects our natural optimism that things will turn out right in the end, and so we feel greatly heartened that the film’s hero should find wealth and happiness.  At the same time, it becomes increasingly apparent how false this ending is, so whilst delighting in the porter’s new-found happiness, we cannot help but imagine the real fate of the ruined solitary old man.  What we are seeing, in this false happy ending, is not reality, but simply another of the porter’s dreams, another flight of fancy as he accustoms himself to a grim empty life without status or self-respect.  What we are seeing, in fact, is a nation humiliated by war and economic decline, yet proudly nostalgic of her former glory.

© James Travers 2004

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