If a person wants to experience a great example of the story-telling power of silent film, I would point said person to 'The Last Command' (1928).
It has everything: an imaginative story, inventive camera-work, intense drama, and a great cast highlighted by a towering performance by Emil Jannings that helped him win the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actor.
'The Last Command' is not an art film—it was a standard-issue drama on Paramount's 1928 release schedule.
At the same time, it's an example of silent film technique at its height. As directed by Josef von Sternberg, the movie makes fluent use of the vocabulary of visual story-telling.
What's especially impressive to me is how the film uses its specific dramatic material to explore universal questions such as the nature of power, the value of loyalty, the meaning of patriotism, the role of chance, and many other issues people have grappled with throughout human experience.
In doing so, I think 'The Last Command' transcends mere entertainment and becomes timeless art. It's a great example of how the best silent cinema can stand alongside the best literature, paintings, sculpture, drama, and music.
You may find this surprising due to silent film's limitations as an art form, such as no dialogue. But I think these limitations are what prompted the best silent filmmakers to produce work that "speaks" to us today.
If can't wait to experience this silent masterwork as intended—on the big screen, with live music, and with an audience—then you're in luck. It's screening on Sunday, Aug. 3 at 4 p.m. at the Center for the Arts in Natick, Mass., with me accompanying.
Press release is below with a lot more info about the film and the screening. Hope to see you there!
* * *
TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2025 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Jeff Rapsis • (603) 236-9237 • jeffrapsis@gmail.com
Silent epic 'The Last Command' with live music at Natick Center for Arts on Sunday, Aug. 3
Josef von Sternberg's groundbreaking psychological drama won 'Best Actor' for Emil Jannings at first-ever Academy Awards
NATICK, Mass.—'The Last Command' (1928), a silent film drama that won Emil
Jannings 'Best Actor' honors at the first-ever Academy Awards, will be
screened with live music on Sunday, Aug. 3 at 4 p.m. at TCAN Center for the Arts, 14 Summer St., Natick, Mass.
The screening, the latest in the Center for
the Art's silent film series, will feature live accompaniment by Jeff
Rapsis, a New Hampshire-based composer who specializes in creating music
for silent films.
Admission is $12 per person for members; $14 for non-members. Tickets are available online at www.natickarts.org or at the door.
'The Last
Command,' directed by Josef von Sternberg, tells the sweeping story of a
powerful general in Czarist Russia (Jannings) forced to flee his
homeland during the Bolshevik Revolution. He emigrates to America, where
he is reduced to living in poverty.
Finding work as an extra at a
Hollywood studio, the former general lands the part of a commanding
officer in a movie about the Revolution, causing flashbacks to his
traumatic experiences. The conflict leads to a spectacular climax and a
towering performance that earned Jannings 'Best Actor' honors.
The
film takes audiences on a journey through big emotions as well as
issues of history, time, power, and especially a man's duty to his
country and to his fellow citizens—and what happens when the two
obligations diverge.
'The Last Command' is also one of early
Hollywood's most creative and challenging looks at the global conflicts
that contributed to World War I.
The film also stars a young
William Powell as a Hollywood movie director who crosses paths with the
general during the Revolution, and 1920s starlet Evelyn Brent as a
seductive Russian revolutionary.
"Making
up the music on the spot is kind of a high wire act," Rapsis said. "But
there's nothing like the energy and excitement that comes with
improvised live performance, especially when accompanying a silent
film."
Critic Leonard Maltin hailed 'The Last Command' as "a
stunning silent drama...a fascinating story laced with keen observations
of life and work in Hollywood." Time Out of London called it "the first
Sternberg masterpiece, expertly poised between satire and 'absurd'
melodrama. The cast are fully equal to it; Jannings, in particular,
turns the characteristic role of the general into an indelible portrait
of arrogance, fervor and dementia."
Director Sternberg, a master
of lighting and black-and-white photography, created 'The Last Command'
as a visual tour de force. The film is often cited as a prime example of
the emotional range and visual accomplishment of silent films at their
height, just prior to the coming of pictures with recorded soundtracks.
Rapsis
said great silent film dramas such as 'The Last Command' told stories
that concentrate on the "big" emotions such as Love, Despair, Anger, and
Joy. Because of this, audiences continue to respond to them in the 21st
century, especially if they're presented as intended—in a theater on
the big screen, with a live audience and live music.
"Dramas such
as 'The Last Command' were created to be consumed as a communal
experience," Rapsis said. "With an audience and live music, they come to
life as their creators intended them to. This screening at TCAN is a great chance to experience films that first caused
people to fall in love with the movies."
'The Last Command'
(1928) will be screened with live music
on Sunday, Aug. 3 at 4 p.m. at TCAN Center for the Arts, 14 Summer St., Natick, Mass.
Admission is $12 per person for members; $14 for non-members. Tickets available online at www.natickarts.org or at the door. For more info, call (508) 647-0097.
No comments:
Post a Comment