Murnau filmed a second version of Der letzte Mann specifically for the American market. Indeed, it was with this expensive and technically revolutionary film, that UFA planned on breaking into the tough overseas market. On December 5, 1924, in a private screening at the Cinema Criterion in New York, the film was presented to the press and to Hollywood film magnates with the title The Last Man, in the presence of Murnau, producer Erich Pommer and screenwriter Carl Mayer. Hugo Riesenfeld was responsible for the music at the Cinema Criterion, as well as at the Rivoli and Rialto theaters where the film was presented on 25 January 1925, with the title The Last Laugh. Riesenfeld prepared the musical accompaniment for this version of the film, starting from indications from Murnau, who was so satisfied with the work that he later proposed Riesenfeld to William Fox, for composition of the music for Sunrise; Murnau then contacted Riesenfeld personally for Tabù, which Murnau also produced. In the musical accompaniment for The Last Laugh, which we have only in the version for piano, there are some repertoire motifs which Riesenfeld and Murnau would return to in Sunrise, just as we will find motifs from Sunrise in Tabù. The American version of the film was completely unknown until its discovery in Camberra, in the form of a distribution print belonging to Australasian Film Ltd. Comparison of the score, the information present on the film – analysis of which showed that the print was struck in New York in 1925 – and the fact that the Australasian distribution company was American with headquarters in New York, led to the conclusion that the print represented a lost American version of The Last Laugh. As part of the project to reconstruct the original negatives of Der Letzte Mann for the F.W. Murnau Stiftung, we now present the American version of the film, restored by the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata. The version is very different from the German version, as well as from the second exportation negative, and it beholds several surprises. For example, some of the scenes which, in the other versions, were made using complex camera movements, in this version seem to have been filmed with a fixed camera. This is probably because, in addition to being complicated, the scenes were not exactly perfect in the other versions; Murnau and UFA thus preferred to show the demanding Americans only perfectly resolved scenes, which showed the high level attained by German cinema.

Luciano Berriatúa