Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Last Laugh (1924)

The Last Laugh (1924) is F.W. Murnau’s greatest film second to none, including Sunrise (1927), and stars Germany’s greatest silent era actor, Emil Jannings, in one of his finest and most impressive roles. This film is wonderfully expressionist, and is an even spare but intensely focused film. It surpasses several of the top films that are considered to be Germany’s silent era best. And I think that it would be hard to overstate the importance of The Last Laugh in the history of cinema.

We have here a chance to enjoy an absolutely fantastic performance by Emil Jannings, whose command of his body during his performance is the unmistakable sign of the work of a great artist. The character’s posture, once so upright and proud, changes the moment he sees his replacement and eventually collapses as his pride deflates like a punctured automobile tire. The character becomes almost catatonic. When the uniform coat, the symbol of his position, is being taken off him it is as if it were being wrestled off a corpse. Given the towels, the symbol of his new position, Jannings walks zombie-like as he descends into the men’s washroom, its dark isolation indicative of the darkness that has already crept into his life. He knows he cannot face his family and neighbors, his loss of prestige a great fall among people so easily impressed by the uniform and caring nothing for the man inside.

With Jannings bravura performance, it may be easy to lose sight of the fact that F.W. Murnau’s direction is equally fabulous. While the film is virtually told without intertitles, and that is often one of the first achievements of the film that gets noted, dramatic lighting, great camera moves, and hand-held shots all contribute to impressively to the visual language of cinema. The camera tracking in and out, or the effect achieved for the oppressive feeling of the hotel falling on him after Jannings steals back the uniform. (This effect predates Inception by more than 80 years.) The effects are those of Murnau speaking in an experimental and expressionistic visual voice. For one striking shot, Murnau even put the camera on a pulley and rope system that is seen illustrated in still production photos.

The film was produced in three separate camera negatives: one (the best selected shots) was for German distribution, one for USA distribution, and the third was intended for striking prints for worldwide export. The German camera negative has survived in incomplete form, and was the main source for the 2003 restoration of the film by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been remastered at 2K high-resolution from the 2003 restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, supervised by Luciano Berriatúa, as conflated from the incomplete German domestic 35mm nitrate camera negative, a 35mm nitrate positive held by the Museum of Modern Art (struck in Germany in 1936), from a fragmentary 35mm German print held by the F.W. Murnau Stiftung, and a print held by the Swiss Cinémathèque. While the restoration was achieved photochemically, this new home video edition has the advantage over previous releases in its new HD scan and extensive digital clean-up work, removing much of the dust, speckling, and other print flaws that were hard-printed into 2003 restoration materials. Nonetheless, a number of less-offending flaws including some dust and speckling, and long vertical scratches have been allowed to remain. The HD scan renders more image detail than previously viewed in editions reproducing the restoration version. In the opening scene, the rain seen through the revolving door is clearly rendered and the drunken fantasy sequence renders clearly defined images within the porter’s intentionally impressionistic drunken revery. We venture to say that the only way this edition could be topped would be to return to the best surviving materials and assemble an all-digital restoration at 4K or higher resolution and remove as many print flaws as prudently possible.

The film is presented with a wealth of optional musical accompaniment, including a new musical score by the Berklee College of Music’s Berklee Silent Film Orchestra (2016), as well as the original score by Giuseppe Becca, orchestrated by Detlev Glanert and performed by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra (2003) [both for the restoration version], and a music score composed by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympia [Washington] Chamber Orchestra (2001) [for the American release version].

Supplemental material includes includes a DVD of the USA release version (with alternate takes and camera angles) accompanied by music composed by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympia [Washington] Chamber Orchestra; audio commentary by film historian Noah Isenberg for the German version; and the documentary, “The Making of The Last Laugh,” by Murnau expert Luciano Berriatúa, with optional English language subtitles (40 minutes). The disc containing the USA version is identical to the disc included in Kino’s 2008 DVD edition (except for the different disc label artwork).

This is our recommended home video edition of the film for North American collectors.

This review was updated in 2025.

This Region A Blu-ray Disc / Region 1 NTSC DVD edition is available directly from . . .

The film is presented with a musical score by the Berklee College of Music’s Berklee Silent Film Orchestra.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary by film historian David Kalat on The Grand Duke’s Finances; excerpts from The Language of Shadows by Luciano Berriatúa on the works of F.W. Murnau (31 minutes); featurette “The Making of The Last Laugh” by Luciano Berriatúa (41 minutes); featurette “Tartuffe: The Lost Film” by Berriatúa (37 minutes); a video essay by critic David Cairns; and a 100-page insert book including articles by Charles Jameux, Lotte Eisner, Janet Bergstrom and Tony Rayns.

Sight unseen, we recommend this home video collection for European collectors. North American collectors will need a region-free Blu-ray Disc player to view this edition.

This Region B Blu-ray Disc edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition has been remastered at 2K high-resolution from the 2003 restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, supervised by Luciano Berriatúa, as conflated from the incomplete German domestic 35mm nitrate camera negative, a 35mm nitrate positive held by the Museum of Modern Art (struck in Germany in 1936), from a fragmentary 35mm German print held by the F.W. Murnau Stiftung, and a print held by the Swiss Cinémathèque. While the restoration was achieved photochemically, this new home video edition has the advantage over previous releases with its new HD scan and extensive digital clean-up work, removing dust, speckling, and other print flaws that were hard-printed into 2003 restoration materials. Nonetheless, a number of less-offending flaws including long vertical scratches have been allowed to remain.

The film is presented with a wealth of optional musical accompaniment, including a new musical score by the Berklee College of Music’s Berklee Silent Film Orchestra (2016), as well as the original score by Giuseppe Becca, orchestrated by Detlev Glanert and performed by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra (2003) [both for the restoration version], and a music score composed by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympia [Washington] Chamber Orchestra (2001) [for the American release version].

Supplemental material includes includes the USA release version (with alternate takes and camera angles) accompanied by music composed by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympia [Washington] Chamber Orchestra; audio commentary by film historian Noah Isenberg for the German version; and the documentary, “The Making of The Last Laugh,” by Murnau expert Luciano Berriatúa, with optional English language subtitles (40 minutes). The disc containing the USA version is identical to the disc included in Kino’s 2008 DVD edition (except for the different disc label artwork).

This is our recommended DVD home video edition of the film for North American collectors.

This review was updated in 2025.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is available directly from . . .

This two-disc NTSC DVD edition features the 2003 restoration from the F.W. Murnau Stiftung, as supervised by Luciano Berriatúa. As this may have been a photochemical restoration, we are not surprised to see a number of print issues including small amounts of dust and speckling, fine emulsion scratches, momentary image warping caused by mild cupping of the source material, and other virtually unnoticeable flaws. The greatest improvement over previous editions is nonexistence here of the frame mismatch line that is present in the earlier Kino editions.

The restoration German version of the film is accompanied by a wonderful new orchestral performance of the 1924 Giuseppe Becce score presented in both 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo sound, as adapted by Detlev Glanert and performed by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Supplemental material includes the USA release version accompanied by music composed by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympia [Washington] Chamber Orchestra; the documentary, “The Making of The Last Laugh,” with optional English language subtitles (40 minutes); original German main title and epilogue title sequences, corrected here to present white letters on a black background (2 minutes); and a stills gallery (16 images). This presentation of the USA version of the film is visually similar to Kino’s 2001 edition noted below.

This review was updated in 2025.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The supplementary material includes a 41-minute documentary by Murnau expert Luciano Berriatúa, and a lavishly-illustrated 36-page booklet with writings by film scholars R. Dixon Smith, Tony Rayns, and Lotte H. Eisner.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

This Region 2 PAL DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition is virtually identical to the 1993 Criterion Collection laserdisc, as was produced for home video by David Shepard. The video transfer for this DVD has many of the same qualities as previous editions released on laserdisc and VHS videotape home video from Criterion and Kino. The source print is a little blasted out in the highlights, and the overall image detail is a little soft. Some shots shows a dark line near the tope of the picture that is caused print duplication frame misalignment. The video transfer here may well be the same as that produced for the 1993 editions. In reevaluating the disc on high-definition equipment with hardware upscaling to a 1080p high-definition signal, the DVD renders a fairly filmlike picture and we stand by our original evaluation of the video quality, but the older video transfer shows its age with a softness of image detail that is only partly due to the standard-definition NTSC transfer and also to the disc’s average bit-rate encoding. Even in 2001, the film could have benefitted from a new video transfer.

We’re guessing here, but, the source print appears to be a combination of a German 35mm negative and an English language export print. The main titles are German, yet there are insert shots of a decorated cake, a newspaper clipping, and of the letter of demotion in English. The DVD’s supplementary material contains a excerpt from a German print with the original German directorial-intrusion intertitle explaining the film’s epilogue. Also included are several still and production photographs.

A beautiful and appropriately moody score was composed and conducted in 1993 by Timothy Brock. The stereo score, noted as a 2.0 soundtrack, is not discreet and decodes through our review system in pseudo 5.0 surround sound. Honestly, there are a few moments when the members of the Olympia Chamber Orchestra do not quite hit their notes, being a little flat, but not often enough to distract from the film.

Supplementary material includes a sequence from a German-language print detailing the graphical treatment of the film’s original intertitles (2 minutes); an image gallery production drawings and stills (31 images); and a two-page insert sheet with a reproduction of a program card from the American release of the film.

Any advance buzz that you may have heard about this disc having DVD mastering problems was correct, but those problems were cleared up before the final release of the edition. While we previously recommended this edition, it has been surpassed in visual quality several times in the twenty-plus years since its release.

This review was updated in 2025.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The film is accompanied by a modern music score.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

This Region 2 PAL DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

We cannot recommend this edition at this time.

This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

We do not recommend this edition at this time.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other silent era EMIL JANNINGS films available on home video.