Silent Movie Festival returns to Ludlow with 100th anniversary of a classic comedy

Saturday, Aug. 24 at 7 p.m.—LUDLOW—Friends of Ludlow Auditorium (FOLA) will celebrate the return of its annual Classic Silent Festival on Saturday, at 7 p.m. in the Heald Auditorium at Ludlow Town Hall. To make this a very special event, the main feature will be the classic comedy, “The Last Laugh”, which was first screened 100 years ago in 1924. The film was directed by Friedrich Murnau.

“The Last Laugh” is a German silent film (with English sub-titles) starring Emil Jannings. He is featured as a doorman to an elite hotel in Berlin. The action takes place during the Weimer Republic period of Germany. As the doorman, Jannings wore a highly-styled militaristic uniform. To his poor neighbors, trying to recover from the ravages of World War 1, this uniform made Jannings a highly-respected neighbor.

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Scenes from the silent film  “The Last Laugh”, which was first screened 100 years ago in 1924. Friends of Ludlow Auditorium (FOLA) will celebrate the return of its annual Classic Silent Festival with a presentation of the film on Saturday, at 7 p.m. in the Heald Auditorium at Ludlow Town Hall.

The hotel’s manager, however, decided that Jannings would be replaced as doorman by a younger man-due to his age, Jannings became a restroom attendant. This meant that he would no longer wear a uniform. This alters his neighbors’ opinion of him from extreme respect to disappointment and disrespect.

“The Last Laugh” traces how Jannings deals with this change in position and public attitude towards him. It is a cinematic example of the ‘Kammerspielfilm’ or “chamber-drama” genre, which follows the style of short, sparse plays of lower middle-class life that emphasized the psychology of the characters rather than the sets and action. The genre tried to avoid the intertitles (title cards) of spoken dialogue or description that characterize most silent films, in the belief that the visuals themselves should carry most of the meaning.

The film was made in 1924, at the time of the Weimar Republic. The war reparation payments imposed on Germany caused skyrocketing inflation, economic collapse, food shortages, poverty, malnutrition and hunger. Germans were looking for some hope for improvement of their economic situation. Even such an unrealistic possibility as inheriting money from somebody else brought some hope. This need for hope and the director’s knowledge of the expectations of the general public were the reasons that “The Last Laugh” has a happy epilogue.

German cinema began co-operative ventures with Hollywood producers. One of the results of this early cooperation was that director Alfred Hitchcock went to Berlin and started working with Friedrich Murnau. Hitchcock was very impressed with Murnau’s unchained camera techniques and stated that his cooperation with Murnau was an “enormously productive experience” and that “The Last Laugh” was an “almost perfect film.”

Jeff Rapsis will return to provide his original musical background to this great silent film. The program will begin with a short Buster Keaton comedy. Glenn Brown will be featured at the auditorium’s classic piano for this sketch.

The Silent Movie Festival is open to everyone and is free; donations are appreciated to cover the many expenses of producing this event.

For more information, call 802-228-3238.