Research Catalog
The last laugh
- Title
- The last laugh / Samuel Frederick.
- Author
- Frederick, Samuel
- Publication
- Rochester, NY : Camden House, 2023.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Not available - Please for assistance. | Text | Use in library | MFLP (Letzte Mann) 24-3194 | Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre |
Details
- Description
- 99 pages : illustrations; 19 cm.
- Summary
- "A penetrating new reading of Murnau's classic silent film that shows its transitional status, both historically and stylistically, while emphasizing its innovative camerawork and the ethical stakes of its story. An undisputed masterpiece of silent cinema, F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) stars the larger-than-life Emil Jannings as a proud hotel porter who is demoted to lowly washroom attendant. One worker's misfortune becomes a tragic turning point in a social drama as much about the struggling Weimar Republic, which had just overcome several years of social, political, and economic instability, as about its working-class citizens. At once clinging to the symbols of the old order while helplessly thrust into an unforgiving modern world, Jannings's fallen porter embodies the contradictions of this transitional moment for the young democracy. Samuel Frederick shows us that Murnau's film is similarly transitional: born at the crossroads between the Expressionist style of the early '20s and the emerging aesthetics of New Objectivity, it is both soberly realistic and oneirically distorted. With only one intertitle, The Last Laugh's flow of images is complimented by cinematographer Karl Freund's innovative mobile camera, which, "unchained" from the tripod, swims effortlessly through the film's different urban spaces. Here, inanimate objects become charged with potency and architecture is animated, conveying both allure and danger. Frederick's incisive analysis of the film foregrounds the visual dynamism of its technological and aesthetic experimentation while also pursuing the ethical implications of its central figure's downfall"--
- Series Statement
- German film classics ; 12
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Contents
- The first title cards and the last man -- Germany at a crossroads -- Activating cinematic space -- The unchained camera -- Intimations of abstraction : the dream sequence -- "The reality of things" -- The monstrousness of shame -- The doubled ending.
- Call Number
- MFLP (Letzte Mann) 24-3194
- ISBN
- 9781640141292
- 1640141294
- 9781800109377 (canceled/invalid)
- LCCN
- 2023003368
- OCLC
- 1369517499
- Author
- Frederick, Samuel, author.
- Title
- The last laugh / Samuel Frederick.
- Publisher
- Rochester, NY : Camden House, 2023.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Series
- German film classics ; 12
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Chronological Term
- 1924
- Other Form:
- Online version: Frederick, Samuel. Last laugh Rochester, NY : Camden House, 2023 9781800109377 (DLC) 2023003369
- Research Call Number
- MFLP (Letzte Mann) 24-3194