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Naked people have no influence, quips Mark Twain, the man in uniform reigns until he doesn't, a poem studied by Hitchcock and Welles and countless others. Visual eloquence is F.W. Murnau's aim, he opens with strokes vertical (descending elevator) and in depth (glide across lobby) before peering outside and taking in the glistening surfaces of the rain-soaked metropolis. Busy night at the Hotel Atlantic, the doorman (Emil Jannings) works the entrance heartily, proud of his rank, his whiskers, and above all his resplendent greatcoat. A preening celebrity at his working-class neighborhood, then a crestfallen hulk upon news of demotion. ("Decrepitude" is the reason given, his eyes run over the word in the missive as the lens grows blurry.) The new position in the depths of the lavatory calls for white garb, the grand uniform is removed and locked in a closet, the desperate protagonist steals it in a tragicomic shot—the camera pans ahead of him and stops on a group of bellhops dozing at the front desk, he zips past them. Vanity and shame, the veneer of prestige and the abyss of nullity, Murnau turns everything into light and gesture and movement. Edifices lean over to crush the old man, a room seesaws in the midst of intoxication, diagonal reflections suffuse the mighty dream and a zoom gives the horror of a cackling face. (Stillness is no less vital, the tenement courtyard at dawn gradually comes to life in a beautiful static view.) Jannings' whole body is attuned to the fluctuations of the tale, buoyant then stooped, his trudge back to the hotel washroom is that of a bull elephant to the graveyard. The guffawing stretto is offered as "quite an improbable epilogue," the devastated hero suddenly flush with money enjoys great gobs of caviar with his pal the nightwatchman, whose little lantern had previously cut through the darkness. (Brecht four years later takes up the mock-happy ending with The Threepenny Opera.) Cinematography by Karl Freund. With Maly Delschaft, Max Hiller, Emilie Kurz, Hans Unterkircher, Olaf Storm, Georg John, and Emmy Wyda. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |