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by Julian Spivey In December of 2022 I saw something called the “12 Movies Challenge” on Facebook. The premise was that you would have 12 months to watch 12 movies recommended by 12 friends. I don’t often participate in such social media challenges but being a movie buff I felt this might be an interesting way to get out of my comfort zone a bit when it comes to watching movies. My Facebook buds gave me some films that I’ve been meaning to watch and I pretty much front-loaded those on the list – though not explicitly stated in the challenge rules I am opting to watch one film a month. A Best Picture winner like “Out of Africa” is an obvious choice for me to get to at some point – that point is now going to be March of this year. But there are certain movies I’m not really looking forward to all that much – I’m looking at you “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” my August selection. Then there’s the acclaimed stuff that isn’t really up my alley like the anime feature “Spirited Away,” which I’ve scheduled for November. That will truly be me getting out of my comfort zone. Here are the 12 movies recommended to me and the months I’ve assigned myself to watch them: January: “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” (1983) February: “Till” (2022) March: “Out of Africa” (1985) April: “Legally Blonde” (2001) May: “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006) June: “The Birdcage” (1996) July: “Morning Glory” (2010) August: “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” (1966) September: “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) October: “Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975) November: “Spirited Away” (2001) December: “The Last Laugh” (1924)  Well, the moment has come, I have finished my 2023 12 Movies Challenge by successfully watching one new movie recommended by my friends and acquaintances each month this year! My final movie was director F.W. Murnau’s 1924 German silent film “The Last Laugh” or in its original translation “Der letzte Mann,” which was recommended by my college film appreciation professor Carl Olds from my days long ago at the University of Central Arkansas. So, it’s not the first time that Carl has assigned me a classic film to watch. Despite considering myself to be a classic film buff I’ve never really gone back and delved into the silent era of film. Let’s just say I’m thankful they developed the talkies before film got too far into its lifetime. It’s truly hard for me to review and compare “The Last Laugh” to anything else because it’s far from my typical movie watching or expertise. The things I like the most about films are screenwriting – “The Last Laugh” is atypical from many in that it doesn’t even use intertitles – and acting, with a huge interest in naturalistic acting the kind of which you didn’t really get from the silent era because everything had to be overly-acting and grandiose to get emotions and feeling across and the lead actor in “The Last Laugh” Emil Jannings does a lot of that with his eyes in the film. “The Last Laugh” is a story about class and ego. Jannings plays a hotel doorman at a fancy hotel and he’s proud of his job and the respect that his doorman uniform commands from those in his community. Due to his age, he’s demoted down to the hotel’s washroom attendant – the lowest of jobs at the establishment – and embarrassed by this he keeps up the charade that he’s still a doorman when he’s away from the job. Eventually, his wife and community find out and they basically laugh him out of the community. The film was intended to end with a very depressing breakdown by the doorman but Murnau and the screenwriter Carl Mayer tacked on an unrealistic (and they know it via the film’s only intertitle) happy ending. OK, so the story is terribly slow and very dour. Unless you’re either a film buff/student who wants to see innovative craft – and I’ll get to that in a second – or you’re just really interested in the psychology of people and what their status in life says about them I probably wouldn’t pull up “The Last Laugh” at home. About that craft. There were times during the film when I was amazed by what Murnau was doing on the screen with camera movements and effects – like blurriness when the main character is drinking in merriment. There were things that I didn’t think were done at that time when it came to camera movements – but as I don’t pay much attention to silent films I wasn’t completely sure. But I always research a film – whether it’s a classic silent film or the latest thing I’ve streamed on Netflix – and sure enough Murnau was doing things with the camera that had never been done before, like essentially making a makeshift dolly. I could tell historically this had to be an important film. My primary interest though in film isn’t to necessarily be entertained but to be moved in some way by the film’s story, which “The Last Laugh” didn’t really do for me. There is something somewhat related to the film that moves me – or really just angers me. Jannings would wind up being the first Best Actor winner in the history of the Oscars later in the decade and then when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to prominence in Germany in the 30s he would star in many Nazi propaganda films. I knew this about Jannings before watching this film and it may have played some factor in me not caring much about his character or his plight. I know, I know. You have to separate real-life fact from fiction. But when I see a Nazi I want to punch said Nazi. Anyway, in that tacked-on happy final scene, the hotel doorman has lucked into riches and he shares them with the one man who showed him kindness in his worst moments, the hotel’s security guard. The hotel security guard in the film was played by Georg John. Georg John was a German stage and film actor, like Jannings, but John was also Jewish. There’s not a whole lot about the end of John’s life online – but there is one thing I found. Being Jewish, John was deported in 1941 from Germany to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland, the second-largest ghetto in all of German-occupied Europe after the Warsaw Ghetto. John died in that ghetto later that year. Meanwhile, Jannings was named the prestigious “Artist of the State” by Germany’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. I hope Jannings is burning in Hell. Anyway, on that fun and fine note, I want to thank everyone who recommended movies for 2023. I hope to do this again in 2024. And, as someone who likes to make entertainment lists here is my ranking of the 12 films I watched this year from my favorite to least favorite.
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