Get us in your inbox

The Last Command

  • Film
Advertising

Time Out says

The Last Command starts from a brilliant script idea: a Czarist general, defeated in the Russian revolution, finds himself down and out in Hollywood, working for peanuts as a bit-player in movies; he is spotted and hired by his former adversary, a Mayakovskian stage director turned Hollywood film-maker; and both men loved the same woman ten years earlier. (Goodrich's script was apparently from an original story by Sternberg, based on an incident told by Ernst Lubitsch to Lajos Biro...) Half the movie is an acid vision of the gap between success and the breadline in contemporary Hollywood, and the other half is a long flashback to revolutionary Russia, with the general seducing the woman Communist, imprisoning his rival, falling from power, and discovering abject humiliation. In other words, this is the first Sternberg masterpiece, the first of his glitteringly stylised rhapsodies of commitment and betrayal, 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, fervour and dementia. Even more incredible, the sheer sophistication of Sternberg's visuals makes nearly all current releases look old-fashioned.
Written by TR

Release Details

  • Duration:95 mins

Cast and crew

  • Director:Josef von Sternberg, Hans Dreier
  • Screenwriter:John Goodrich, titles Herman J Mankiewicz
  • Cast:
    • Emil Jannings
    • Evelyn Brent
    • William Powell
    • Nicholas Soussanin
    • Michael Visaroff
    • Jack Raymond
Advertising
You may also like
You may also like