013059 / G / DE / 1924 / Murnau, F.W. / / drama
Letzte Mann, Der / Viimeinen mies. PC: Ufa. EX: Erich Pommer. D: F.W. Murnau. SC: Carl Mayer. DP: Karl Freund. PD: Robert Herlth, Walter Röhrig. CAST: Emil Jannings (The Hotel Porter), Maly Delschaft (His Niece), Hans Unterkircher (The Hotel Manager). Music for live accompaniment composed by Giuseppe Becce. 2315 m /20 fps/ 101’. Silent b&w. There are several original versions of this film. - Yleisradio TV2 PAL transmission at midnight on 22 March 1998 of a ZDF reconstruction from 1983 by Gerd Luft and Jürgen Labenski, with a score by Giuseppe Becce and Werner Schmidt-Boelcke, based on a print from Münchner Filmmuseum, with Finnish subtitles by Pirkko Vikkula. Caught on Easter Sunday on VHS. **** This was the first viewing of this film for the general audience in Finland since its premiere. In the meantime, it has been a part of the basic film archive programming. - The ZDF version is complete, nothing is missing. Probably the pictorial quality has been enhanced in later restorations. The music was not bad, but I was happy to quickly turn it off. - ”All the tenants, in particular the female ones, are awed by his uniform, which, through its mere presence, seems to confer a mystic glamour upon their modest existence. They revere it as a symbol of supreme authority and are happy to be allowed to revere it” to quote Kracauer. As a storyteller Murnau is crude: he hammers home every point, overstating the obvious. As a creator of visions he still reigns supreme. His sense of composition is startling, and the space is kept alive with rain, steam, smoke, and moving reflections. The mobile camera, introduced in Scherben and Sylvester, was perfected here. The roving camera creates a sense of vertigo, which fits the theme of rise and fall - downfall and resurrection.
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