Film discussion: The Last Laugh

The Last Laugh (Dir: F.W. Murnau)

F.W. Murnau was one of the great masters of the silent film era, and The Last Laugh (1924) is one of his signature achievements. The story is simple: a doorman at a high-class hotel is demoted to the lowly station of washroom attendant and tries unsuccessfully to hide his humiliation from friends and family. But this tragedy of a proud man losing all he holds dear is one of the purest examples of visual storytelling in cinema and a watershed moment in the development of the medium. No less an authority than Alfred Hitchcock described The Last Laugh as “almost a perfect film” and cited it as one of his major influences.

Come on out and join us in a discussion of The Last Laugh! I'll leave a copy of Andre Bazin's What is Cinema? on the table to make it easy to spot us (look for the salmon pink cover—you can't miss it).

Note: Available streaming on Kanopy (accessible with an Edmonton Public Library card) at
https://edmonton.kanopy.com/video/last-laugh