The Last Laugh Frederick Paperback Boydell and Brewer 9781640141292

The Last LaughAuthor(s): Samuel Frederick\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, United States\nImprint: Camden House Inc\nISBN-13: 9781640141292, 978-1640141292\nSynopsis\nA 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.\n\nAn undisputed masterpiece of silent cinema, F. W. Murnau's The Last Laugh [tel] 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 o.