The Last Laugh

I purchased a VHS copy of this movie at a used book sale at our public library.  Unfortunately, the tracking in the movie was horrible and made the top third of the movie difficult to watch.  It is a silent movie released in 1924.  Emil Jannings stars as an aging doorman who is demoted from his job when his boss mistakenly believes that the man is not doing his job.  He has just completed a backbreaking task and is simply taking a break.  The extreme;ly heavy suitcases that he has just unloaded are even part of a later dream sequence.  The doorman is reassigned to be a bathroom attendant and only a night watchman seems to care about him.  His co-workers, his neighbors and even his family to some extent laugh and laugh.  They can't seem to offer or provide any sympathy at all.  Even though this is a silent movie there are no dialogue cards (except for one just before the end.)  Instead, the movie doesn't really need dialogue.  In a way, it could be made today and, hopefully, they wouldn't add a word of dialogue.  The director, F.W. Murnau, is masterful in presenting this look at German culture.  I suspect that such laughter would well describe some of the humiliation and degradation which was part of pre-World War II Germany.  The end of the movie is a little strange and some people dismiss it but I sort of liked it.  The doorman suddenly inherits millions of dollars from someone he has helped as a washroom attendant.  People are laughing again at the unusual fate of a washroom attendant inheriting money.  And, of course, the former doorman is laughing too as he helps the poor and the underlings.  I recommend the movie and hope I get to see a better copy of it.