Symbolic Uniforms of The Last Laugh by Jay Levy

The film The Last Laugh has within it the theme of class structure. It delves into a German society where “uniform is king,” and with the uniform comes respect and power. The Last Laugh has as its main character a porter, who loses his respectable uniform and with it his willingness to live. Emil Jannings, the porter for the grand Atlantic hotel, is seen to become too old to handle heavy luggage from some of the hotel’s patrons. The manager sees this and thinks he is doing best by removing him as the doorman and giving him a less stressful job as the lavatory assistant.  What the manager does not know is that the removal of the militaristic uniform from the porter lowers his self worth and makes him an outcast from the society that reveres him as a higher being, almost a military general. Throughout the film, the porter changes his uniform three times. With each change comes a different state of mind, as well as a different set of meaning. The movie revolves around these uniforms donned by the porter which become the most important symbol used in The Last Laugh.

“This [The Last Laugh] is pre-eminently a German tragedy and can only be understood in a country where uniform is King, not to say God” (Eisner 207).Uniform is the most important symbol of this film; it reflects three different states of mind as well as three different times in the main character's life. The first uniform, introduced at the opening of the film, is the porter, or doorman, uniform. The porter uniform, with its buttons and gold lace, is representative of a higher lifestyle for Emil. He may be a poor, working class man, but with the uniform on he is transformed to an almost military or general-like status. He is seen to walk through a crowd of people that live in his neighborhood; saluting them and having them salute back.“ All tenants, in particular female ones, are awed by his uniform which, through its mere presence, seems to confer a mystic glamour upon their modest existence,” (Kracauer 100).In the porter uniform, he gains respect from not only the lower class with whom he lives, but from the patrons of the hotel as well. His job as doorman is on the street, which may not be entirely on the same level as the rich upper class, but they still have to meet him on this level where they interact. He is a part of this upper society so long as he is doorman at the Atlantic hotel.

In contrast to his upper class position of doorman, when he is stripped of his uniform he becomes a lower class worker and in his eyes, a lower class citizen. To complete the cycle of a military feel, during the removal of his uniform, a button is seen to fall from the coat. “The button torn from the doorman’s livery as he is stripped of his uniform is filmed in its fall, a detail which makes the stripping the equivalent of military degradation,” (Eisner 210).The porter is then handed the white blouse of a lavatory assistant. The hotel manager seems to be acting out of concern for the doorman’s age and health, but to Emil, this is the highest form of degradation. He loses his standing in the society as he knows it. No longer will he be able to be king of the people from his neighborhood. The uniform, as seen to connect to Germany at the time, is that of the military importance. Men of that time period were, in order to hold any respect or position of authority, to wear military uniforms. The porter’s uniform is that of a military uniform, at least in to him and the people of his neighborhood. The lose of that uniform changed his personality and made him into a broken man, much like the rest of the so-called important members of the German society. “He [the doorman] believes himself humiliated by the loss of his uniform, and instead of maturely putting up with his plight, he falls into a self pity tantamount to complete self-renunciation,” (Kracauer 100).The porter, now a lavatory assistant, becomes a broken man without the uniform; he descends into the pits of despair, changing even his walk to match his broken state of mind. He walks low to the ground as if his back is broken; he even stops caring about his personal appearance dressing sloppily and not grooming his mustache and hair. During his time as a non-respectable lavatory assistant, the only time the viewer sees this character return to his stately and dignified general walk is in his dream. His dream is supposed to show his strength, the physical strength of the dream is to transfer what he felt his emotional strength should have been.

The last uniform the viewer sees the main character take is that in the escapist ending added to the original film. The new happy ending is supposed to be very unrealistic and fantasy-like. “What follows is a nice farce jeering at the happy ending typical of the American film. ...If there should exist a way out for a hotel porter degraded to lavatory attendance, it is certainly not identical with any solution rooted in the superficial concepts of Western civilization,” (Kracauer 101).The ending shows the porter becoming rich and moving from the entirety of the lower class to the upper class of which he desires to be a part. His new uniform is that of this upper class: an expensive suit and jewelry. The ending is supposed to leave the viewer with a sense that this should not be, it is too fake for anyone to believe it is truly possible. Western millionaires do not just die in the lavatory, and leave all their money to the last person to be with them when alive. However, even if that were possible, the ending is purposely sending a message that money cannot buy happiness. Life is a tragedy, and that message is masked in the new, straight and fixed walk of the old porter--the new millionaire.

The conclusion of the film puts a happy light on what is supposed to be a tragic ending. In a way, though, both endings are tragic. The first ending has the doorman fall into the pit of despair, or Hell, and die within the prison of the lower class uniform. The second ending has him become a rich upper-class man with enough money to throw around at everyone, which does not seem to be a tragic ending, but the way in which he inherited the money is what makes that ending tragic. It is supposed to be unrealistic, a fairy tale. Life is a tragedy, luck such as that shown by the lavatory assistant’s surprise inheritance does not happen in the real world--life is not Hollywood. His uniform may be fixed, but he is still the same character, stuck in this uniformed world, where the uniform is king. The uniform in The Last Laugh changed three times and with it came a new personality of the doorman, or lavatory assistant. The most important message of the film was that clothes make the man, at least in the eyes of the German public of 1924.

Works Cited:

Eisner, Lotte. The Haunted Screen. University of California Press: Los Angeles.1965.

Kracauer, Sigfried. From Calagari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton University Press: Princeton.1974.

The Last Laugh. Directed by Friedrich W. Murnau, Germany, 1924.