Review - Murnau's Critique of the German Bourgeoisie in The Last Laugh

Germany in the Weimar Period faced a myriad of dilemmas: mounting national debt due to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, rapid inflation, the rise of fascism, and the confusion regarding their national identity. These issues helped to inform and influence the new art medium of the time: film. In F.W. Murnau's influential silent film, The Last Laugh, he critiques the German middle class and their vapid obsession with power, authority, and social status, and how that shapes their collective identity, by focusing on the main character and his reaction to his loss of position and influence.

The major turning point in the film, which tracks the fall and rise of a hotel porter, comes about seventeen minutes in; the porter comes to work only to discover another man in his position. He marches to the manager's office and asks for an explanation. The manager wordlessly hands him a letter which informs him of his demotion, due to old age, to the position of lavatory attendant. The news throws the old man into a state of shock; he slowly absorbs the full impact of the letter and what it means, and in a last ditch attempt to prove his worth he tries to hoist a piece of luggage up over his head. Unfortunately the exertion is too much for him, and he collapses on the floor. At this point the manager, who up until now has remained seated at his desk smoking a cigar, totally ambivalent to the emotional crisis of his employee, stands and goes over to help him up (of course, he doesn't actually help him: he calls over a doorman instead, and proceeds to wash his hands as if to get the porter's germs off of his skin). The porter is then promptly stripped of his uniform and sent down to the lavatory. The scene has a static quality, due to the stationary camerawork, which combined with the slow cuts and close-ups on the face of the porter, heighten the dramatic tension and importance of the events.

Throughout this entire scene the porter acts as if he as just seen a ghost: his eyes bulge out, and his lips quaver. It's almost as if he is in a catatonic state. Once he loses his uniform the once proud man appears older, his frame hunched over, his usually well-kept hair and mustache a mess. The uniform, military-like in appearance, is the physical manifestation of the porter's minimal, yet important, power and influence. Without it, he is lost. At one point, he literally clings to the object, an obviously metaphoric gesture signifying his death grip on his former glory and social status. This reflects the upwardly-mobile mindset of the German middle class, a people who, at least according to Murnau, were never satisfied until they were members of the upper echelon. The porter's interactions with his middle class neighbors (they are all in awe of his position and uniform) furthers this notion of their lust for power. The fact that, once the porter returns home a vestige of his former self, he is met with scorn and derision by not only his neighbors but even his wife and recently-married daughter ultimately exposes the ridiculous superficiality and obsession with social status and power of the German bourgeoisie.

By placing a middle class character whose identity is so intrinsically tied to an inanimate object that is reflective of his position and "power", Murnau and team are able to condemn the complacency and vapid social climber tendencies of the middle class. The porter's demotion is, in his mind and those of his fellow bourgeoisie, tantamount to death; the scene where he is stripped of his uniform is not merely an act of capitalist indifference, but an execution. The heightened melodrama of the scene, and the porter's radical change in demeanor, highlight the lunacy inherent in a culture whose main goal is reaching the upper social stratum.