A taste of cinema history with silent film classics featuring newly composed, original scores performed live by acclaimed accompanists.

For this performance The Coolidge Corner Theatre is proud to welcome back Berklee College of Music Professor Sheldon Mirowitz and the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra for a special presentation of their original new score, commissioned for our screening of F.W. Murnau’s silent classic.

The Last Laugh (Der Letze Mann) stars Emil Jannings as the doorman of a posh Berlin hotel. Fiercely proud of his job, Jannings comports himself like a general in his resplendent costume, and is treated like royalty by his friends and neighbors. The hotel’s insensitive new manager, noting that Jannings seems winded after carrying several heavy pieces of luggage for a patron, decides that the old man is no longer up to his job. The manager demotes Jannings to men’s washroom attendant, and the effect is disastrous on the man’s prestige and self-esteem.

Logically, the film should end on a note of tragedy, but Murnau (either because he was ordered to by the producers or because he just felt like it) adds a near-surrealistic coda, wherein Jannings, having suddenly inherited a fortune, returns to the hotel in triumph. The Last Laugh was a bold experiment for its time: a film told entirely visually, with no subtitles save for the semi-satirical explanation of the climax.

In a sense, Karl Freund’s camera is as much a “character” as anyone else, commenting upon Jannings’ rise and fall via then-revolutionary camera angles, jarring movements and grotesque lens distortions. Many historians credit The Last Laugh as the vanguard of the “German invasion” of Hollywood during the mid- to late-1920s. — Synopsis courtesy of Kino International 

Advance tickets can be purchased online at the website or at the box office, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline. For more information visit the web site or call (617) 734-2500.

The Sounds of Silents® is made possible by the generous contributions of Dr. Martin and Becki Norman, Dr. Thomas Gutheil, Susan Stoller, Elizabeth Driehaus, and Chobee Hoy.