Kino's DVD features a wonderful score by Timothy Brock and the Olympia Chamber Orchestra as well as the credits montage sequence from the German release. Production stills are also included among the supplements. --Sean Axmaker

To correct the technical info above, this Kino DVD edition is for ALL REGIONS. It also contains some extra material: an excerpt from the German version showing the "epilogue" title card in German, and a still gallery. The picture of this DVD looks exactly the same as that of the Criterion laserdisc made in '93 -- picture is in good shape overall, but the image often looks soft, and details are sometimes hard to make out. While playing the disc on a PC with a software DVD player, I have to turn on "force BOB mode" in order to eliminate the frequent motion artifacts. On my non-progressive scan standalone DVD player, however, I do not see any motion artifacts, but paused frames are sometimes unstable and jittery.

The score on the LD, composed by Timothy Brock, is also used for the DVD. The running time of 91 minutes shown on the DVD case is incorrect. It runs 88 minutes, same as the Criterion LD. I was surprised that the PCFriendly software is included on this disc (and it will auto-run on your PC), but there is no DVD-ROM feature at all.


The Movie is Great, BUT the Buyer Beware!   October 6, 2004
 22 out of 29 found this review helpful

I concur with most of what is written in the reviews below: This indeed is one of the greatest silents ever made; Karl Freund's sauntering camerawork and lighting are gorgeous; Keith Brock's score is a nice fit, and; the transfer is from a well-preserved print.

That said, I did not get to find all that out, despite owning the DVD for over two months. Why?

Well, for one, I just got discharged from active duty service in the Army. I lived in a barracks at Fort Dix, NJ, and watched DVD movies on my laptop computer. So, after buying this gem of a flick, I rushed back to my room to watch it.

Nada.

Unfortunately, Kino Video -- a company that wants to be noted for its sterling film preservation efforts and highest quality transfers -- was not content with simply letting me watch this disc. No, instead, Kino used this disc as a veritable Trojan horse to smuggle a program called "PC Friendly DVD" onto my hard drive. Naturally, there was no labelling at all on the packaging, to let me know that Kino had ulterior motives, but I nonetheless loaded the program onto my hard drive, that I may watch this movie.

Ah, but there's one more catch: Once the software downloaded, a pop-up window came along to add insult to injury. Seems that even though I let Kino download a program onto my laptop without my consent, I then needed to register the damn thing before I could watch this movie! Talk about gall!

Problem was: My barracks room did not have an internet connection, so I couldn't register their software, thus was I verboten from being able to view this movie until I arrived back at home, sweet home, back in Texas, and was able to watch it on my home DVD player.

I talked to an Army buddy who bought Kino's release of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," and he was unable to watch it on HIS laptop computer. He waited three weeks for his package to arrive from amazon, only to find that the insidious product registration requirements of the alleged "PC Friendly" DVD player made it impossible to view the movie.

Troops in the sands of Iraq don't have internet access for their laptop computers, either.


Not very funny.   April 10, 2002
 13 out of 18 found this review helpful

F.W. Murnau's *The Last Laugh* may make you wonder if film technique has really advanced appreciably during the 80 or so years since its release. Murnau and cameraman Freund tell their story strictly with the camera. (There's only one title card during the movie -- an apologia for the tacked-on happy ending just after the story should've really ended.) As has been noted, the camera MOVES in *The Last Laugh*: it swoops down corridors, glides through doors, closes in on Emil Janning's Porter, creates hypnotic hallucinations, on and on. I'll grant that these moves can make you feel as if you're attending Film School 101, creating the problem of detaching you from the actual story. Well, the industry had to start somewhere! Murnau's Expressionist advances in movie art over the even-earlier giants like Griffith remain not only significant but still inspiring to watch. As for the story itself, it's a nauseatingly depressing tale of a genial, rather pompous old doorman who can no longer cut the mustard. "Out of consideration" for his previous decades of service, the management at the ritzy hotel Atlantic doesn't out-and-out fire him -- they send him down, Dante-like, to the washroom, to towel-dry the hands of capitalist pigs. (This may be the only movie in existence wherein a demotion at work is the prime source of tragedy.) The degradation is most keenly symbolized by the exchange in uniforms -- from gold-buttoned, Colonel-of-the-Guards magnificence to unadorned, white proletarian oblivion. It's basically a movie about the eternal class struggle, though some have seen, in Jannings' transformation from blustering bigwig to sagging, nearly immobile old man, an allegory of Germany itself after the Great War. Maybe . . . maybe not. However you interpret *The Last Laugh*, you should probably own it if you're serious about movies. If you haven't yet seen it, rent it at least, and discover where guys like Orson Welles stole all their ideas.


German art!   April 28, 2000
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

This film is truly revolutionary. Pioneer camera man Freund uses moving shots to evoke the inner turmoil of the proud hotel porter Jannings. Sadly, he is demoted and his life turns to darkness and nightmares. Beautiful imagery, brilliant acting, and a magnificent feat of Master Murnau. This movie radiates like a 90 minute continuous Expressionist painting. I highly recommend Friedrich Murnau's work. This 1924 film is originally titled "Der letzte Mann" or "The Last Man."


Well made historical curio   December 19, 2001
 5 out of 13 found this review helpful

As a fossil from the silent era, this is an important film. Murnau is innovative and displays his usual poetic visual style to tell this story of a doorman who is demoted to latrine worker (and notice how so many German films are about humiliation?). Silent film lovers and film historians should not miss it. The rest of us may find it a bit creaky and dusty. Five minutes of plot are dragged out interminably. Jannings overacts, as usual. The new score on the Kino edition (which has the best film print) was distracting to me and sounded ponderous.