The last command is one of the strangest, greatest and cruelest films about hollywood during the silent era, culminating in double cameras shooting the russian revolution on a sound stage. Impoverished protagonist emil jannings, seeking work as a film extra in hollywood, had been the czar’s general until the revolution and his mental breakdown. A flashback shows us the reason. A woman, the woman for him (evelyn brent), whom he knows to be a revolu- tionary spy set to kill him, falls in love with her target – or does she? In a cataclysmic train sequence, she turns against him – to save him? Sexualizing ideology like lang’s bad maria in metropolis, she whips a mob of revolutionaries into chaotic fury. This train of destiny represents both destruction and freedom predicated on sexual sac- rifice and humiliation. Class rise and fall are at the heart of the film, despite sternberg’s avowed disinterest in politics and the displace- ment of class to hollywood, where trauma is set to repeat itself. Jannings won an academy award, lajos biró was nominated for best story, which sternberg claimed he himself wrote