best film: Emil Jannings’ overall archiveable filmography is pretty skinny, but there are two masterpieces here to contend with. Both F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) and Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) are correct answers as far as the question of Jannings’ best film is concerned. Oddly enough, Jannings is in both a landmark for camera movement (Murnau’s film) and an early milestone of mise-en-scene frame design (von Sternberg’s film). One might use the only formal misstep in Murnau’s film (that weak epilogue that Murnau acknowledges “doesn’t occur in real life”) to break the tie and give the ever so slight edge to The Blue Angel.

Jannings as Professor Immanuel Rath in The Blue Angel. Most reviews focus on the colossal performances of Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich and they are not misguided in heaping an abundance of praise on the two. These are two of the towering performances of the early sound era. Jannings’ Professor Immanuel Rath is the tragic (operatic almost) arc of the film. Jannings is marvelous. He is so studied accentuating every adjustment of his glasses or the particular way he pours his coffee. His posture and appearance deteriorates (as does his soul) over the course of the film. This is a study on humiliation – Dietrich laughs at his proposal and at the 73-minute mark the eggs with his rooster call – a cuckold. Jannings is clearly devastated without a word of dialogue as he puts on the clown suit himself. He has transformed.
best performance: The Last Laugh but both this and the category above are essentially tied. In both The Last Laugh and The Blue Angel Jannings’ characters go through a horrifying journey of humiliation. They both start with such promise and pride (Jannings carrying it in his posture and shoulders) – even arrogance – the rise – before the tragic call of course. This is a Raging Bull level gut punch of a character study. In both films, Jannings’ characters fall into purposelessness – he is completed emasculated in The Blue Angel. He is scrubbing the floor in shame in The Last Laugh.

Jannings has not one but two performances that rank among the finest of their respective decades. The Last Laugh (pictured here) for the 1920s, and The Blue Angel for the 1930s. One is silent film, one is a talkie.
stylistic innovations/traits: The Swiss-born Emil Jannings is now most remembered (f he is remembered at all) as either the first Oscar best actor winner and/or – as a Nazi sympathizer (he is portrayed in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds). He was part of the Nazi movie propaganda machine of Joseph Goebbels. While costar from The Blue Angel Marlene Dietrich was leaving Germany and becoming a U.S. citizen, Jannings went the other way and continued to work in Germany and star in Nazi films. Still, there is no denying Jannings’ achievements on screen or his awesome talent. He was a big man – stout. His resume includes two jaw-dropping performances in masterpieces and that is his clear strength. But with only six (6) overall archiveable films, that entire body of work is much better than it should be. He is hypnotic in Faust (another genius film from Murnau), his Oscar win is fourth (4th) best performance on his top five (5) below, and even in his sixth (6th) best performance in Waxworks is quite a feat. Waxworks is a top ten (10) of the year quality of the year film and one cannot take their eyes off Jannings when he is on screen. The first section of the film is the Baghdad set story with Jannings’ character. Very few actors could play evil as well as Jannings. He played Mephisto in Faust just a few years after Waxworks. Jannings had the technical skill to match any great actor – and a big canvas of face built for silent film shortcut casting. He sort of resembles Jim Broadbent’s Harold Zidler character (or vice versa obviously with this coming out more than seventy-five years prior) in Moulin Rouge! Many of Jannings’ films simply do not exist anymore. He made five silent films in the states (all with Paramount) and only The Last Command has survived. When sound arrived, Jannings fled Hollywood – maybe because of politics, maybe because with his thick accent his career would have been dubious in the states (he succeeded in talkies, just not in English) – maybe both. He then made his Nazi films and his career was over. His last archiveable film was made in 1930 with both him and director Josef von Sternberg operating at the height of their powers. Jannings would pass away in 1950.

Emil Jannings as Grand Duke Sergius Alexander in The Last Command – the first winner of the Best Actor Oscar.
directors worked with: F.W. Murnau (2), Josef von Sternberg (2) – two titans of early cinema

Jannings as Mephisto in F.W. Murnau’s Faust – made just one year before Murnau’s Sunrise
top five performances:
- The Last Laugh
- The Blue Angel
- Faust
- The Last Command
- Variety
archiveable films
1924- The Last Laugh |
1924- Waxworks |
1925- Variety |
1926- Faust |
1928- The Last Command |
1930- The Blue Angel |
That’s quite a big leap, is The Last Laugh a top 100 masterpiece? I have not seen The Last Laugh but he is incredible in The Blue Angel.
I would put Kinski(Aguirre, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo) over him but again I have not seen The Last Laugh.
@Alt Mash- The Last Laugh makes a big difference for sure.
@Drake – have not heard of him before, excited to check him out though when I get to some of the earlier directors. Are there any great actors or actresses who were stars during the silent era and able to replicate the same (or close to) amount of success in talkies? Just curious as I watched Babylon (2022) a few weeks ago. The scene with Brad Pitt’s character Jack Conrad being told his time has passed by the critic is for me the scene that really resonates emotionally.
@James Trapp- I am not @Drake, but Jannings is clearly one of them (The Blue Angel is a talkie and my pick for his best performance), Chaplin was as successful as ever, Zasu Pitts became a character actress, Ronald Colman and John Barrymore became an even bigger stars, Conrad Veidt also became a character actor, Victor Sjostrom have his best performance in Wild Strawberries, George Baxter had some supporting work in westerns etc.
I am probably missing a lot of others.
@RujK – I am always happy to get responses from anyone. Hows your decade studies coming along?
@James Trapp- I am almost in the middle of 70s and I will try to finish it before the end of June, but nothing is certain (May is a tricky month, with 2-3 exams a week in my school, so I won’t have as much time as before).
The one that immediately came to mind when I read your question was Norma Shearer. She was very successful during the silent era (worked with Lubitsch and Sjöström), but that success multiplied threefold with the arrival of talkies (she was nominated for five Oscars during the 30s and won once before retiring in 1942). It’s a shame her fame’s been fading over the years (maybe due to the fact that she doesn’t have a big masterpiece under her belt), because she was a brilliant actress and she gave some extremely good performances during that time.
@James Trapp- Very few succeeded in both silent films and sound films. Garbo is probably the poster child for success in both- though yes – Jannings gave one silent and one talkie top echelon performance (nobody, not Garbo even- did that). His performance in The Blue Angel is a talkie- but not English (so Hollywood was dicey for him).
@DavidO.@Drake – interesting, thanks for the responses guys, I have only seen a handful of silents films but was interested after watching Babylon (2022). Will have to brush up on my silent films. Planning on doing a Fritz Lang Study soon so will get to some of the biggies like Metropolis
Lang was a visionary genius and Metropolis is (in my humble opinion) the biggest cinematic achievement of the 20s. Should be a very rewarding study!
Don’t really know him. Sad to see Kinski drop.
Subtlely was not one of Jannings’s strenghts, that’s for sure. He was stylized and over-expressive even for silent film standards. Still, he was absolutely fascinating to watch and had an unforgettable presence onscreen, and he made every single performance count. I would probably place him lower (way lower, if I’m being honest), but I’m glad that at least someone remembers him, because he certainly was a talented actor and he’s being almost completely forgotten due, I’m sure, to the fact that he made one of the worst career moves in film history. Who knows what would’ve happened if he had followed the Dietrich route. No disrespect to Mr. G. Robinson, but he would’ve been a perfect Chris Cross in Scarlet Street.
@David O.- I like that Scarlet Street casting – good one
@David O. – I just watched Scarlet Street a few weeks ago for I think the 3rd time (I have a long post on Drakes page for it) It is one of the most underrated noirs. I have not seen Jannings yet so I certainly cannot challege the opinion. But Edward G is pretty amazing in Scarlet Street. Seeing him in the apron is both hilarious and horrifying at the same time!
I’m sorry if it seems I take issue with something every time I comment- it’s really because I respect this site and want my comments to be worthy of adjoining it, i.e. liable to spawn productive discussion, and that would not come from our (many) agreements being emphasized
Now that that’s out of the way, why do you consider the epilogue of The Last Laugh a formal misstep? Here is why I do not: earlier in the film (26:45 in my version) there is a tracking shot (a) which shows all of the servants peering at Jannings as he walks to his demotion’s final stage- this ends with an angle showing a closet, by which said stage is revealed to be towel-holding. After he is handed the towels a double door is shown (b)– first the left door, which is opened for him by the senior maid, then the rest is slowly revealed as he goes through it. The area beyond is entirely covered in shadow, and his labored descension is a bleak sight. Later in the film (47:45 in my version) the staircase is shown at another angle (c) somewhat illuminated, with the double doors at the bottom half-visible suggesting that it has become familiar to him. I would argue that in the epilogue, shot a is unified with shot c in a way that counteracts shots b. The camera follows Jannings down the same hall as people bow to him and smile, and the shot ends with BOTH the closet and the double doors visible, but the area beyond is again covered in shadow, and the doors at the bottom are barely visible. So the place is almost as unfamiliar to him now as it was before he had been to it, but Murnau makes it clear that this is not a frightening unfamiliarity because the same senior maid opens the door for him, not as a way of ordering him to go through but out of respect, and as he descends the angle is held allowing the well-lit room behind him still to be seen (1:22:08 in my version)
It may be a puzzling narrative decision but I have always thought of it as a satire of pasted-on happy endings rather an of an example of one itself.
*rather than an example of one itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIOTElYpurU&t=2513s
this is “my version”
@Frodo- thanks for sharing this here – read your comments a few times and there’s a lot of thought put into this here – I love this. I’m not saying you’re wrong and Ebert is right at all – just wanted to share here: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-last-laugh-1924
“Improbable, and unsatisfying, because a happy ending is conjured out of thin air”
You are not in miserable company, true. Sometimes I wish Ebert’s ghost would knock on my bedroom window during a tempest, and I would let him in for brandy, and we would debate these things.
“Is it unsatisfying because it is improbable? If so, why do you have no such reservations about Taxi Driver’s ending?”
“Because Taxi Driver’s ending is ambiguous- we do not know if it was a dream or not and that is consistent with the tone of the film. Murnau, on the other hand, tells us outright that his ending is not true to life.”
“Is Murnau’s openness not a sign that there is more to his epilogue than you think? Most insincere happy endings aren’t preceded by apologies but presented as if they were normal. That’s what makes them insincere.”
“Regardless of his intentions it is emotionally untrue.”
“I find emotional truth in the way he consummates his visual motives. That Jannings’ once-crypt is now an ordinary bathroom to him (as I explained in this comment on The Cinema Archives) shows he has almost forgotten his days of meekness and become aloof like his former superiors. All successful people experience this temptation, but why is it unsatisfying for the resistance of temptation to be depicted in art?”
“You said it was a satire of happy endings but now you claim it was sincere, and defend its sincerity.”
“These do not contradict each other in my opinion- the way that happiness is given to Jannings is satirical but the lessons he learns from it are genuine.”
“How novel! Perhaps you are right. I cannot tell, for I am a drunk ghost.”
@Frodo- I have been thinking about this – I love the discussion. Keep up the good work