romanorum1 The last year of silent movies saw so many classics that old-timers of long ago thought that Hollywood had peaked. After all, in 1927 there was "Metropolis," "Sunrise," "The General," and "Napoleon." In 1928 there was "The Passion of Joan of Arc," "The Crowd," "Steamboat Bill, Jr." and "The Cameraman." Josef von Sternberg's drama, "The Last Command," certainly belongs to this group. The Austrian-born director's classic focuses on former Russian Grand Duke Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings), who immigrated to the US following the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the movie, Hollywood director Lev Andreyev (William Powell) casts the ex-aristocrat as a general in creating a movie about the revolution of ten years earlier.A lengthy flashback, which occupies at least one-half of the film, shows the Grand Duke's high status as it was in 1917. The man was no less than the commander of the Russian armies on the Eastern Front in World War I. Then revolution breaks out, along with all of its chaos, which sets up professional and personal tragedies for the imperial general. Somehow he does manage to escape embattled Russia, winding up in Hollywood. Impoverished, he survives as an extra. The Hollywood director, Andreyev, was a former Russian revolutionary opposed to the conservative Czar Nicholas and former Grand Duke. In former times the latter had even struck the revolutionary and sent him to prison. Now, ironically, Sergius has to take orders – a last command – from the director! The movie was based upon real events, as a former Russian general named Theodore Lodigensky really did find some work in Hollywood after fleeing the Bolshevik uprising after World War I. Jannings is outstanding as the traumatized general – complete with a head-twitch – a tragic character who tumbled a long way down from his high perch and who eventually becomes insane. Thus he shows his range, from authoritativeness to infirmity to dignity. The Swiss-born actor would win the very first Academy Award for Best Actor (1927-1928). Evelyn Brent, who certainly passes as a Russian, is fair enough in the role of revolutionary Natalie Dabrova, lover of Andreyev who later falls for the ruined aristocrat. Finely cast is William Powell as the revenge-minded director of Electra Studios. Note how impeccable he appears in his light suit. Powell was made for sound movies, though, and not only would he easily make the transition from the silent screen era, but would also become a major star. Movie pluses are the well-constructed scenes of the cataclysmic revolution in Petrograd, which may have been powerful eye-openers for 1920s audiences. The Lionel trains are used in certain scenes, but they work well enough for the time. However, there are two instances where one can question the realism of the picture: (1) revolutionary Natalie's supposed falling in love of the Grand Duke (although he does love Russia) and (2) the last line, where the Bolshevik director proclaims, "He was more than a great actor, he was a great man." It is quite arduous to believe that a maligned Communist – with extreme political leanings – would make such a grand statement about the Czar's cousin and Grand Duke! Nonetheless the film is a good one.

howardeisman Sure the absence of spoken dialogue, flimsy sets and obvious miniatures mark this movie as an antique, but it does grab you. It is easy to disregard the antique technical aspects of the film, but the psychology of the protagonists are equally out of date. Did people in 1928 swallow the unlikely behavior of the protagonists as reflecting real life or did they see it as necessary plot components of a fantasy. I suspect the latter.William Powell was most naturalistic in his acting. He played a calculating, humorless, dictatorial movie director. The antithesis of Nick Charles. Jannings got a chance to strut his famous histrionics, and he puts on quite a show. Brent could be a smoldering Garbo one minute and a Joan Crawford flapper the next. Her behavior was designed for script purposes and did not simulate any fully fleshed out character.Director Joseph von Sternberg (nee Jonas Sternberg)and Jannings reached their career heights with The Blue Angel two years later. Von Sternberg could really stretch out a quiet, actionless scene and fill it with tension. He was successful in Hollywood for a while and then his career crashed. Jannings became a Nazi in Germany and slid into obscurity and early death after WWII.The movie can be gripping. It is well done, but the characters are acting out a movie style fantasy that is not longer palatable. I couldn't suspend my disbelief. Hey, times change.

drednm On a movie set in 1927 there is a call for an extra to play a Russian general in a war scene. The director (William Powell) calls in an old man (Emil Jannings) who receives the call at his boarding house. The old and confused man arrived at the studio amid a crowd of extras. As he pins a medal on his costume, he tells the story of how the Czar had given it to him and we flash back to 1917.Jannings in a general in the Russian army and a cousin to the czar, He recalls dealing with two revolutionaries: a theatre director (Powell) and a beautiful actress (Evelyn Brent). While Powell is sent off to prison (from which he escapes) he takes Brent along with him as a consort. She eventually learns that his love for Russia is true and deep and she falls for him.But while on a train to Petrograd, revolutionaries overtake the train and kill most of the military men. As they beat and harangue the general, Brent jumps to the front and demands that they take him to Petrograd to hang him in public. Brandishing her revolutionary flag in the wintry wind while she screams to the crowds, Brent is remarkable.As the train proceeds with its prized prisoner, Brent helps Jannings jump off the train to safety as she explains this was the only way she could save him. From a snowbank, the general watches as the train speeds away across a bridge over an icy river.Back in Hollywood, the old man is stirred by his memories of old Russia and as the movie scene is set he blinks and stares at the familiar images of war. As the director yells for lights, camera the old man, who has now totally lost his hold on reality, engages in a ferocious scene of war action, raising the flag of old Russia in one last burst of glory, his last command.Emil Jannings is just superb in this film and won the first Best Actor Oscar for it; the finale is an emotional tour de force. Evelyn Brent is also excellent and gives perhaps her finest performance. This was an important film role for William Powell as well.This is a beautifully done film and is not to be missed.

Steffi_P 1927, and Hollywood had been on the map as the centre of the cinematic world for a little over a decade. Now that it had become the site of a multi-million dollar industry and the vertically integrated studio system had been established, some of those in the calmer quarters of this film-making factory were taking the time for a little self-reflection. The Last Command, while its heart may be the classic story of a once prestigious man fallen on hard times, frames that tale within a bleak look at how cinema unceremoniously recreates reality, and how its production process could be mercilessly impersonal. It was written by Lajos Biro, who had been on the scene long enough to know.Taking centre stage is a man who was at the time among Hollywood's most celebrated immigrants – Emil Jannings. Before coming to the States Jannings had worked mainly in comedy, being a master of the hammy yet hilariously well-timed performance, often as pompous authority figures or doddering old has-beens. He makes his entrance in The Last Command as the latter, and at first it looks as if this is to be another of Jannings's scenery-chomping caricatures. However, as the story progresses the actor gets to demonstrate his range, showing by turns delicate frailty, serene dignity and eventually awesome power and presence in the finale. He never quite stops being a blustering exaggeration (the German acting tradition knowing nothing of subtlety), but he constantly holds our attention with absolute control over every facet of his performance.The director was another immigrant, albeit one who had been around Hollywood a bit longer and had no background in the European film industry. Nevertheless Joseph von Sternberg cultivated for himself the image of the artistic and imperious Teutonic Kino Meister (the "von" was made up, by the way), and took a very distinctive approach to the craft. Of note in this picture is his handling of pace and tone, a great example being the first of the Russian flashback scenes. We open with a carefully-constructed chaos with movement in converging directions, which we the audience become part of as the camera pulls back and extras dash across the screen. Then, when Jannings arrives, everything settles down. Jannings's performance is incredibly sedate and measured, and when the players around him begin to mirror this the effect is as if his mere presence has restored order.Sternberg appears to show a distaste for violence, allowing the grimmest moments to take place off screen, and yet implying that they have happened with a flow of images that is almost poetic. In fact, he really seems to have an all-round lack of interest in action. In the scene of the prisoners' revolt Sternberg takes an aloof and objective stance, his camera eventually retreating to a fly-on-the-wall position. Compare this to the following scenes between Jannings and Evelyn Brent, which are a complex medley of point-of-view shots and intense close-ups, thrusting us right into the midst of their interaction.As a personality on set, it would seem that Sternberg was much like the cold and callous director played on the screen by William Powell, and in fact Powell's portrayal is probably something of a deliberate parody that even Sternberg himself would have been in on. Unfortunately this harsh attitude did not make him an easy man to work with, and coupled with his focus on his technical resources over his human ones, the smaller performances in his pictures leave a little to be desired. While Jannings displays classic hamming in the Charles Laughton mode that works dramatically, it appears no-one told his co-stars they were not in a comedy. Evelyn Brent is fairly good, giving us some good emoting, but overplaying it here and there. The only performance that comes close to Jannings is that of Powell himself. It's a little odd to see the normally amiable star of The Thin Man and The Great Ziegfeld playing a figure so stern and humourless, like a male Ninotchka, but he does a good job, revealing a smouldering emotional intensity beneath the hard-hearted exterior.The Last Command could easily have ruffled a few feathers in studio offices, as tends to happen with any disparaging commentary on the film-making process, even a relatively tame example like this. At the very least, I believe many studio heads would have been displeased by the "behind-the-scenes" view, as it threatened the mystique of movie-making which was still very much alive at this point. As it turned out, such was the impact of the picture that Jannings won the first ever Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as a Best Writing nomination for Lajos Biro and (according to some sources, although the issue is a little vague) a nomination for Best Picture. This is significant, since the Academy was a tiny institution at this time and the first awards were more than ever a bit of self-indulgent back-slapping by the Hollywood elite. But elite or not, they recognised good material when they saw it, and were willing to reward it.