User reviews

The Last Command, was inspired by a true story… sort of. Legendary director Ernst Lubitsch was invited by a friend to dinner at a Russian restaurant where he was introduced to the owner, one General Lodijenski. This General had fought in World War I, but lost an important battle and fled west shortly afterwards opening a restaurant called The Double Eagle on Sunset Boulevard.

Several months later, Lubitsch was at MGM working on The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg when he noticed an extra in costume of a Russian General. "I know you from somewhere," said Lubitsch. "I met you before," the extra replied. "I am General Lodijenski." Turns out his restaurant had closed and he was forced to now take extra work in the movies. "Funny, isn't it," he said, "that I should be playing a walk-on bit as a Russian general."

Mulling the encounter over, Lubitsch began to see it as a perfect scenario for Emil Jannings, whose gift for portraying tragic, masochistic characters had long since been established. Lubitsch told the story to Jannings, who expressed interest. A few weeks later, Lubitsch ran into writer Lajos Biro, who mentioned that Jannings was not only a brilliant actor but had good story ideas as well. Biro then proceeded to tell Lubitsch about the script he was working on, at that point entitled The General. It was the same story Lubitsch had told Jannings.

The script was written and given to Josef von Sternberg to direct. Sternberg made some brilliant changes to frame the main story as a flashback, giving the narrative a quality of retrospection, with the implications of loss from the beginning. It was re-titled, The Last Command and what happened to General Lodijenski? He was given a small part in the film and I am told he can be observed as a thick-set, middle-aged man with short hair.

Now we have the seeds of the story, a Russian General once a cousin to the Czar ends up a mere extra in a movie about a Russian General – irony. But there is much more irony, the symbolism of the peasants being mistreated by those above them is the same as the extras being mistreated by the Hollywood elite.

The films star, Emil Jannings was a Swiss born actor known for portraying imposing historical figures like Henry 8th, Othello, Louis the 15th and Nero. In the mid-1920's many considered him the world's greatest screen actor. He was often cast in films designed to showcase his gift for tragedy as in F.W. Murnau's 1924 feature THE LAST LAUGH where Jannings played a proud but aged hotel doorman who is demoted to restroom attendant. Or the silent version of FAUST made in 1926 where he played Mephistopheles. The Last Command was his 57th film silent and later his first talkie, THE BLUE ANGEL also directed by Josef von Sternberg was a huge international hit and made a star out of Marlene Dietrich.

When I recently re-watched this film I was amazed to see this old, feeble and broken man shaking beneath the weight of his memories juxtaposed against him as he was young, virile handsome commanding an entire army as well as every room he entered.

Notice the tenderness the director pulls out of this gentleman when he explains why he shakes, because he had a great shock once and then we look with him into a mirror that leads us back to the story of a once great man.

In the flashback we see William Powell and Evelyn Brent as revolutionary spies pretending to be actors. Evelyn Brent was a dark haired beauty with sultry looks that led to her being typecast exotic, dangerous roles as a sex addict who did drugs everyday. Her break thru role was as an alcoholic in the play THE RUINED LADY. Just before tonight's film she had made UNDERWORLD in 1927 with the same director Josef von Sternberg, it is considered the first major gangster film. On a trivia note her husband's name was Harry Fox for whom the foxtrot dance was named for.

William Powell was one of the most popular leading men in Hollywood for over four decades but I bet you didn't know he started in silent films mostly playing heavies and bad guys! In his first film he was a criminal to John Barrymore's SHERLOCK HOLMES in 1922! LAST COMMAND was his 27th silent film and before this he was never a top star but on the strength of his reviews from this feature he was soon cast as the lead role in a talkie called THE CARNARY MURDER CASE where he played Philo Vance, a detective. He was so good in it he never played a bad guy again. Unlike many silent actors, sound boosted Powell's career. He had a fine, sophisticated voice and his stage training and comic timing greatly aided his introduction to sound pictures. He's best remembered today for his work with the charming Myrna Loy in six THIN MAN pictures.

The very first Academy Award ever presented was given to Emil Jannings (he received his award early due to the fact that he was going home to Europe before the ceremony) for his performances Best Actor in a Leading Role for: The Last Command (1928) and for The Way of All Flesh (1927). That first year they gave it for the whole years work and not just a single performance. Sadly THE WAY OF ALL FLESH is a lost film so we have nothing to compare it with.

Sternberg is best remembered today for his amazing lighting and cinematography of Dietrich but I saw watch the actors eyes in this film and you'll see he was also a director of great performances in amazing stories… I do you seek out and enjoy THE LAST COMMAND!

1927, and Hollywood had been on the map as the centre of the cinematic world for a little over a decade. Now that it had become the site of a multi-million dollar industry and the vertically integrated studio system had been established, some of those in the calmer quarters of this film-making factory were taking the time for a little self-reflection. The Last Command, while its heart may be the classic story of a once prestigious man fallen on hard times, frames that tale within a bleak look at how cinema unceremoniously recreates reality, and how its production process could be mercilessly impersonal. It was written by Lajos Biro, who had been on the scene long enough to know.

Taking centre stage is a man who was at the time among Hollywood's most celebrated immigrants – Emil Jannings. Before coming to the States Jannings had worked mainly in comedy, being a master of the hammy yet hilariously well-timed performance, often as pompous authority figures or doddering old has-beens. He makes his entrance in The Last Command as the latter, and at first it looks as if this is to be another of Jannings's scenery-chomping caricatures. However, as the story progresses the actor gets to demonstrate his range, showing by turns delicate frailty, serene dignity and eventually awesome power and presence in the finale. He never quite stops being a blustering exaggeration (the German acting tradition knowing nothing of subtlety), but he constantly holds our attention with absolute control over every facet of his performance.

The director was another immigrant, albeit one who had been around Hollywood a bit longer and had no background in the European film industry. Nevertheless Joseph von Sternberg cultivated for himself the image of the artistic and imperious Teutonic Kino Meister (the "von" was made up, by the way), and took a very distinctive approach to the craft. Of note in this picture is his handling of pace and tone, a great example being the first of the Russian flashback scenes. We open with a carefully-constructed chaos with movement in converging directions, which we the audience become part of as the camera pulls back and extras dash across the screen. Then, when Jannings arrives, everything settles down. Jannings's performance is incredibly sedate and measured, and when the players around him begin to mirror this the effect is as if his mere presence has restored order.

Sternberg appears to show a distaste for violence, allowing the grimmest moments to take place off screen, and yet implying that they have happened with a flow of images that is almost poetic. In fact, he really seems to have an all-round lack of interest in action. In the scene of the prisoners' revolt Sternberg takes an aloof and objective stance, his camera eventually retreating to a fly-on-the-wall position. Compare this to the following scenes between Jannings and Evelyn Brent, which are a complex medley of point-of-view shots and intense close-ups, thrusting us right into the midst of their interaction.

As a personality on set, it would seem that Sternberg was much like the cold and callous director played on the screen by William Powell, and in fact Powell's portrayal is probably something of a deliberate parody that even Sternberg himself would have been in on. Unfortunately this harsh attitude did not make him an easy man to work with, and coupled with his focus on his technical resources over his human ones, the smaller performances in his pictures leave a little to be desired. While Jannings displays classic hamming in the Charles Laughton mode that works dramatically, it appears no-one told his co-stars they were not in a comedy. Evelyn Brent is fairly good, giving us some good emoting, but overplaying it here and there. The only performance that comes close to Jannings is that of Powell himself. It's a little odd to see the normally amiable star of The Thin Man and The Great Ziegfeld playing a figure so stern and humourless, like a male Ninotchka, but he does a good job, revealing a smouldering emotional intensity beneath the hard-hearted exterior.

The Last Command could easily have ruffled a few feathers in studio offices, as tends to happen with any disparaging commentary on the film-making process, even a relatively tame example like this. At the very least, I believe many studio heads would have been displeased by the "behind-the-scenes" view, as it threatened the mystique of movie-making which was still very much alive at this point. As it turned out, such was the impact of the picture that Jannings won the first ever Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as a Best Writing nomination for Lajos Biro and (according to some sources, although the issue is a little vague) a nomination for Best Picture. This is significant, since the Academy was a tiny institution at this time and the first awards were more than ever a bit of self-indulgent back-slapping by the Hollywood elite. But elite or not, they recognised good material when they saw it, and were willing to reward it.

"The Last Command" is a beautiful and extraordinary film in the best tradition of classic story-telling, with German actor Emil Jannings giving an outstanding performance for which he won the first Oscar for "Best Actor" ever. Based on the life of Russian official Theodore Lodijensky, who ran from the Soviet revolution and worked in Hollywood as an extra in silent films, Jannings plays a general who is chosen for a big historical production by a fellow countryman, a theater director who he once persecuted in Russia, for his subversive activities, and who is now in charge of the film's direction. From the first scenes when the military is selected, when he arrives in the studio, dons his costume and makes up, to the scene he impressively plays in the film-within-the-film (containing one of the most eloquent critics to cinema when turned into a cold industry that makes either films as sausages or limousines), "The Last Command" consists of a long flashback of the general's life in Russia, when he incarcerated the theater director and fell in love with a revolutionary actress. Jannings would work again for Sternberg as the protagonist of "The Blue Angel", seduced by the wicked Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich). Highly recommended.

An extra is called upon to play a general in a movie about the Russian Revolution. However, he is not any ordinary extra. He is Serguis Alexander, former commanding general of the Russia armies who is now being forced to relive the same scene, which he suffered professional and personal tragedy in, to satisfy the director who was once a revolutionist in Russia and was humiliated by Alexander. It can now be the time for this broken man to finally "win" his penultimate battle. This is one powerful movie with meticulous direction by Von Sternberg, providing the greatest irony in Alexander's character in every way he can. Jannings deserved his Oscar for the role with a very moving performance playing the general at his peak and at his deepest valley. Powell lends a sinister support as the revenge minded director and Brent is perfect in her role with her face and movements showing so much expression as Jannings' love. All around brilliance. Rating, 10.

Josef Von Sternberg directs this magnificent silent film about silent Hollywood and the former Imperial General to the Czar of Russia who has found himself there. Emil Jannings won a well-deserved Oscar, in part, for his role as the general who ironically is cast in a bit part in a silent picture as a Russian general. The movie flashes back to his days in Russia leading up to the country's fall to revolutionaries. William Powell makes his big screen debut as the Hollywood director who casts Jannings in his film. The film serves as an interesting look at the fall of Russia and at an imitation of behind-the-scenes Tinseltown in the early days. Von Sternberg delivers yet another classic, and one that is filled with the great elements of romance, intrigue, and tragedy.

I had little experience of silent films except few and far between until I saw The Last Command. With the great Josef von Sternberg directing and Oscar winning performance by Emil Jannings, I knew I could expect something memorable and I was richly rewarded in experience when I viewed it. Now I have no qualms about silent films and have become something of a fan of them. Three other silent films of equal caliber came to my mind when I watched this film; The Passion of Joan of Arc,Nanook of the North and Battleship Potemkin I noted that to bring the full effect of a movie's message and produce entertainment as well, it is a much harder task for the performers than with sound and dialog. In this film, Jannings outdid himself and absolutely deserved the Oscar, the first for a foreign actor in Oscar history. His haughty bearing as the imperial Russian general and appropriate facial expressions were totally convincing and he appeared taller and grander than himself in real life. Then again, as the devastated,humiliated extra in the Hollywood Bread line he was just as superb. he was able to project that false dignity even as he was dressed up in the uniform of his former rank in the Russian army for the part he was asked to play. The last few minutes of this movie brought to memory his depiction of Emmanuel Rath in the other great movie he made with Marlene Dietrich, Blue Angel, but in Last Command he was even more admirable. One gets deeply into the atmosphere of the scenes, the story and the music when one watches this film. For that, the credit goes to Sternberg as much or more than to the principal actors. The music score was also so very beautiful and made for a great total effect.Performances by Evelyn Brent and William Powell were also superb. Brent did a great job both as the delicate beauty as well as the vicious turn coat in her role.

A former Imperial Russian general and cousin of the Czar ends up in Hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary.

This is a great film, due largely to Emil Jannings. With all due respect to William Powell, Jannings is a powerful screen presence and deserved his Oscar. It is truly a shame that his career ended up going the way it did, because he should be celebrated, but instead seems to be forgotten by anyone other than fans of the silent film / German expressionism.

I love that this story has some basis in fact. I have no idea how close it follows the truth, but the very idea that such a story exists is amazing. It makes sense, i suppose, that any number of Russians would become refugees after 1917 or so. It would make even more sense that they end up in Hollywood, which was growing fast thanks to immigrants at he time.

The Last Command (1928) is a silent film directed by Josef von Sternberg.It shows us Czarist General, Grand Duke Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings) in his days of glory.In 1917 he had all the power but after the revolution and the collapse of Imperial Russia he has nothing.He also had the love of a woman, Natalie Dabrova (Evelyn Brent).About ten years later he applies for a small part in a film about the revolution.His old enemy Lev Andreyev (William Powell) is the director who gets to choose whether to hire him as a film extra or not.The Last Command is very good silent drama.Emil Jannings does memorable role work in the lead.Evelyn Brent is wonderful playing the woman lead.William Powell is great as always.There are plenty of scenes to remember in this movie.Like many scenes with Jannings and Brent.And then there is the ending with Powell and Jannings.This is a movie that touches in many parts.

Emil Jannings was certainly the actor of his time. While at moments subject to the silent era "over-performing" *The Last Command* really has none of it, and we witness the full range of Jannings' performance as the brutish, high-energy general to the shell-shocked ghost of himself in this picture. An excellent supporting cast in William Powell and Evelyn Brent lift this film even more as we are lead through the general's flashback to how he became the way he is. The amazing lead performance and film comes to a close with an unforgettable ending.

Emil Jannings is masterful in this depiction of an elderly gentleman selected by an Hollywood director (William Powell) to play the part of a Russian general in a film. When he arrives on set, his colleagues tease him about a medal he is wearing. He proceeds to tell them it was given to him by Czar Nicholas II himself, and after a bit of playful derision, they return the medal and the "General" finds himself looking into the mirror of his make-up box whence he drifts into a retrospective of his true self - the commanding General Grand Duke Sergius Alexander, cousin to the Czar and the man in charge of Imperial Russian forces in 1917. His portrayal of this proud, effective man who displays some sense of pragmatism about their military situation, coupled with a sense of gentleness to Evelyn Brent (who is actually the Bolshevik spy sent to eliminate him "Natalie") is nuanced and engaging. As the revolution turns the tables on this once powerful man, we see his character exposed to hardship and degradation before his new love manages to help him escape the clutches of the murderous mob. When we return to the present day, this old, fading, patriot sees his candle burn brightly just one last time... Though it may have some basis in truth - it was frequently safer for European generals who lost battles to flee rather than face the consequences at home - it is a fictional story and I think that allows Josef von Sternberg much more licence to create and develop the characters. Jannings is super, but to a lesser extent, so is Brent as the dedicated revolutionary who falls in love with the old Duke, and sees in him a different sort of love for his country, one she finds endearing and honourable. The photography works well in illustrating the revolutionary scenes amidst the poverty and cold and sparing use of inter-titles gives us plenty to keep this strong, impassioned narrative moving along perfectly. Great watch.

This is one of the most richly woven tapestries I have discovered on film about film, acting about acting, fictions about fictions. The extra allure here is that it comes to us from the last minutes of the first hours of cinema, at the cusp of silent and sound filmmaking and so just as cinema - then pioneering elaborate theories about the eye animating the world, and so the eye as soul - was about to revert back to the simple machinations of theater. It would re-emerge from these notions in the time of the New Wave; this is New Wave of thirty years before.

The story is so interesting in itself, you should know a rough outline; an exiled Russian general winds up - is karmically reborn - on a Hollywood set as a movie extra to play a Russian general, reliving the past. The framing story is a flashback to his days in Russia, the old Russia about to be torn asunder by revolution, and then we have contemporary time as he struggles to relive the events for the camera.

The story within a story that emerges is connected by the most astonishing panorama of people acting roles. So we have within the flashback, which takes up most of the film; the general acting autocratic from the power of a uniform; troops acting in front of the Czar who inspects them; the revolutionary girl acting coy and in love; then while truly in love - this is a plot point you will just have to swallow - acting like a revolutionary; finally the general acting out his part in the cataclysmic turn of events.

There is more, once we reach out of the film; so we have a European actor coming to America to act in a film about the same, the only surviving film from his time in America; acting again a part he had played in The Last Laugh some years before. As in Murnau's film it is the uniform, and so the fabric of ceremonial occasion, there a hotel porter's uniform, that permits a performance that validates living. And once painfully stripped of it, there is only naked soul.

This is all very potent stuff to see, but it wouldn't be the same without the powerful ending. The general assumes his position on set as himself, and as cameras roll out their re-enactment of a forlorn trench, he becomes completely submerged in the hallucination, memory, essentially the internal narrative running in his mind of the original events. So we have a third layer here, the set as the space of memory and now the eye, the camera, looking inwards to relive.

The motion rippling across the layers is so seductive we may overlook how this ripple is a full cycle.

The one narrative is finally complete in the others, the cycle only possible with this alignment, and so this poignantly reveals both the creative and destructive aspects of art. The various threads and boundaries blurred, are now clear again through an osmosis of the soul. On one side we have the act of a powerful creation; on the other, bitter end, a broken man consumed in the fire of that act.

Sternberg knew what he was doing. Everything here dazzles with artifice, scale of descent, camera magic. The transition inside the flashback and back from it happens through a mirror, the looking glass of fictions that crystallizes illusion. This is the full cycle then; the ending somberly unmasks truth in illusion, heart in mind.

See, if you can find it, from the same year The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra, about an anonymous, disposable actor caught in the wheels of the dream factory. I will follow the thread to The Blue Angel.

I had wanted to see this film for a number of decades before at last it became available on the web. At one time I had the opportunity to see it in a real cinema, but then something happened and the show was cancelled - so I had a special relationship with this film ever since the 70s, when I became a fan of the genius von Sternberg. His genius is particularly evident in this film, with its overwhelmingly human touch and story.

Emil Jannings is cousin of the tzar and grand duke of Russia. As such he is acting as general in the war, when the revolution breaks out, and he is brutally humiliated and saves his life only by a weird coincidence, manages to get out of Russia and turns up in Hollywood as a pathetic and shaky old stand-in. A director (very convincingly played by William Powell, later 'The Thin Man') discovers him as the former general he is, the director himself having been a Russian revolutionary and humiliated by the general. He gives the former grand duke a chance to play the general once again in a film... It's the moment of reckoning.

Jannings' performance is as always stunningly impressive, and here he gets the opportunity to play the whole range of his ability from a glorious but overbearing imperial grand duke to a horribly humiliated old wreck of what once was a man. The tremendous story adds to the pathos and dramatic power of the film, which mercilessly accelerates in interest and suspense all the way until the devastating finale...

I have seen most of Josef von Sternberg's films, but I was never so impressed as by this one, although I had waited for it 40 years. So much is contained in it, the whole fate and tragedy of Russia impersonated in a looming giant of a figure describing a monumental fall from total glory to total disgrace, and yet, like in "The Last Laugh", he succeeds in performing the miracle of triumphing by his mere tragedy.

The music adds to the greatness of this film as well, there is much Tchaikovsky, both the Slave March and the Pathetic symphony, but the rest of the music, which is the greater part, is equally apt. Those masters of music who chose and made the music for the silents were experts in their field and taste - I have never seen a silent with its original music which wasn't impressive.

At the same time it's an ingenious movie about the movie industry and gives chilling associations to later double films like "Sunset Boulevard". It's like no other film, which adds to its timelessness.

The Russian film director Leo Anrdreyev (William Powell) is going through a stack of photos looking for extras for his new Hollywood film. He comes across a photo of an extra that claims to be an exiled relative of the czar and head of the czar's army when he was in Russia. Andreyev instructs his assistant to have him show up tomorrow and to put him in a general's uniform. When the extra Sergius (Emil Jannings) arrives on the set the atmosphere has him reminiscing about his time leading the Russian army during WWI at the time of the revolution and reveals "the great shock" he received then that has rendered him a broken man.

Evelyn Brent has an important role as a revolutionary who is captured by Sergius, and she is truly wonderful here, just as she has been in other silent films I have seen. She is unfortunately an example of an actress whose career was killed off by talking films in spite of the fact that she had a perfectly fine voice. Her problem was her flat delivery of lines in that perfectly fine voice.

I don't know if this film would have been translatable into sound film. It is very effective with very little dialogue and lots of stirring imagery as Sternberg does his usual magic with the camera. It was inspired by the true story of General Lodijenski, a Russian aristocrat who arrived penniless in the US after the 1917 Revolution and who supported himself by playing movie bit parts.

This film was one of two films that won Emil Jannings the first Academy Award for Best Actor, the other being a film, "The Way of All Flesh", that Paramount managed to lose. There would be a bit of a reversal of fortune for Emil Jannings and WIlliam Powell in life just as there was in this film. At the time Jannings won the Best Actor award he had already gone back to Germany as he correctly guessed he would have a hard time of it in talking English language films with his thick German accent. William Powell, however, gained great acclaim and leading man status as a direct result of the advent of sound film. But even though he spent about ten years at Paramount, once he left in 1931 he never did another film there although he did films at all of the other major studios over the next two decades. I wonder if there is a story there?

I admire the care in the film for costume design, set design and decoration, and makeup, with the latter especially important given the plot structure. What sparing special effects we see are done very well, with further attention to technical considerations such as lighting and editing. With that strong visual foundation, director Josef von Sternberg arranges some great scenes, and swell individual shots, making fine use of tracking at a few points. And within that framework we get a wonderfully engrossing story. I admit it's not what I thought I was sitting down to watch in the first place - as it turns out, it's much, much better. The era of silent film is filled with many timeless classics, but 'The last command' is surely among the very best.

The screenplay is truly outstanding, crafting characters of marvelous depth and complexity, and the dialogue as conveyed through intertitles is smart and sharp. The scene writing is excellent, and adept; whatever the mood in a given moment, each passing sequence is meticulously constructed to impart all due drama, vigor, and emotion. More than that, along with the characterizations and sequencing, in any given scene our sympathies may be slanted one way or another - a great credit to screenwriter John F. Goodrich, that he so masterfully illustrates how complicated people can be.

Above all, the narrative as a whole is absolutely fantastic, potent and absorbing. Early scenes don't feel especially remarkable, yet before half the runtime has passed our attention is held fast. The story is compelling, and bears significant core thematic content. I'm not sure that I'm entirely on board with the developments between the protagonist and the chief supporting character - the embellishment feels too much like a contrivance of Hollywood storytelling convention that says these figures must necessarily have a particular relationship to one another. Yet that bit of nitpicking is the only specific fault that comes to mind over the course of these 90 minutes - and as a counterpoint, it's refreshing that in a tale with subject matter dovetailing into real life (and what was then very recent history), the feature doesn't try to plant a flag. There are no heroes or villains here, just people swept up one way or another in the tidal wave of revolution. Not least of all, it must be said - I was not prepared for just how impactful the ending would be. 'The last command' had already well impressed before the finale, but I think the conclusion elevates the feature to a whole new level.

With that said, one can hardly discuss the picture without lavishing praise upon its stars. Emil Jannings famously won the first Oscar awarded for "Best Actor" in 1929, and I couldn't argue with that accolade if I wanted to. The Grand Duke Sergius Alexander is a man of contradictions, yet unswerving in his devotion to Russia, and his experiences throughout the film form a wellspring of varied emotions. Jannings deftly captures them all with superb range, poise, nuanced expression, and even calculated physicality, bringing the general to life with an astounding vitality that's a joy to behold as a viewer. (To learn that within a few years after this film the actor would go on to have an association with the worst people in the world... well, that rather puts a damper on things.) Other players are less prominent, but no one appearing before the camera is any less than capable. However, Evelyn Brent is also noteworthy in the supporting role of Natacha Dabrova, standing tall next to Jannings in his skill set while also carrying an inescapable allure about her.

I began watching with no foreknowledge, and I have been confounded in the best of ways. I'm well accustomed to watching silent films that have stood the test of time, but of any I've seen to date, few or none have been so thoroughly entrancing and exceedingly well made as this. The writing is nigh impeccable, with performances to match, and the direction ably keeps up to tie the production together. Even audiences who tend to have difficulty engaging with silent features should give this one an earnest try: 'The last command' is a phenomenal cinema classic that even nearly 100 years later deserves utmost recognition and wide viewership.

Director Ernst Lubitsch told screenwriter Lajos Biro about a former Russian Tsar general he met who was an owner of a New York City restaurant after he fled from his country during the 1917 Revolution. The former general, Theodore Lodigensky, later crossed paths with Lubitsch in Hollywood working as a movie extra for $7.50 a day. He would show up at the film studio in his old Russian officer's uniform. Lubitsch saw a riches-to-rags story here and passed the ex-general's story to scriptwriter Biro.

Biro submitted his script to Paramount Pictures. The studio loved his screenplay and assigned its director, Josef von Sternberg, the story that ran along similar lines Lubitsch had told Biro, with some embellishments. The resulting film, January 1928's "The Last Command," became a much critically-acclaimed motion picture for the studio.

When the new Academy of Motion Pictures nominated its first awards for Best Actor, German actor Emil Jannings, who played General Dolgorucki, was one of three actors considered (Charlie Chaplin and Richard Barthelmess were the other two.). His body of work for that year in "The Last Command" and 'The Way of All Flesh,' (a lost film), won him the Academy Awards' first Best Actor. Biro was nominated for Best Original Story, only to be edged out by Ben Hecht's script for Sternberg's "Underworld."

Biro's script, with some input from Sternberg, stars actor William Powell as a Hollywood film director who spots Dolgorucki's picture in the extras' contact sheets. He has a plan in mind to give him the role as a leader of front line Russian troops who rebel at his commands. "The Last Command" then flashes back to World War One Russia where Powell's character, Leo Andreyev, a stage director in charge of putting on shows to entertain the troops, has been rumored to be aligned with the Bolsheviks. Leo and actress friend Natalie (Evelyn Brent) are brought before Dolgorucki. Leo's a bit too mouthy to the commanding officer, who whips him in the face, then sends him to jail. As for the actress, the officer takes Natalie along with him.

Actor Powell, whose later screen persona was playing witty, carefree characters, was the ultra-heavy in "The Last Command." His Andreyev is a bitter man who sees a golden and unexpected opportunity to seek revenge for the general's actions against him. In real life, Powell and Sternberg argued so much on and off the set that the actor went to studio executives to have them re-write his contract stating he would never be assigned to the director ever again.

Jannings found out he won Best Actor three months before the Academy's May 1929 awards' ceremony. He was schedule to be in Germany at that time to film another movie and couldn't be in Los Angeles to accept his award. Handing him the statuette just before he left California, the Academy made Jannings the first person to receive an Academy Award in its history as well as the first no-show winner for the ceremonies.

"The Last Command" began Sternberg's most prolific period in his film career. Although his movies during this time firmly set him as one of 'the greatest filmmakers of the late silent era," his pictures generally weren't huge money makers for Paramount. Meanwhile, the real former Russian general, Theodore Lodigensky, shortening his name to Lodi, continued to receive screen time in Hollywood up until the mid-1930s. He's especially visible in his role as a hotel doorman in 1932's 'Down to Earth.'

It's 1928 Hollywood. Director Leo Andreyev (William Powell) picks the picture of an elderly Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings) from a stack of nobodies to be an extra. He casts him as the Russian general facing a revolt in his own ranks. In 1917, Grand Duke Sergius Alexander is the Czar's cousin and commander of all his armies. In one incident, he viciously whips revolutionary Leo Andreyev in the face and puts him in prison. He keeps Leo's fellow revolutionary Natalie Dabrova (Evelyn Brent) at his headquarters. She is conflicted and falls in love with Sergius. When revolutionaries take over his train, she helps him escape and dies in the process.

There is some great acting from the three leads. Emil Jannings does a great job and wins the acting Oscar for his work in this film and 'The Way of All Flesh'. I'm not totally convinced by the love story between the revolutionary and the general but the movie is still compelling to watch.

Three outstanding performances here - Emil Jannings, Evelyn Brent, and William Powell are all brilliant - and the direction from Josef von Sternberg is superb. Jannings plays a Russian General trying to quash the Revolution, and Brent and Powell are revolutionaries in the guise of actors. That part of the story is told in an extended flashback, because a decade later Jannings and Powell have improbably found themselves in Hollywood. Crowd scenes in both periods are very well done, as extras mash against each other in the present, and the combat gets bloody in the past - but it's the story of the revolution that shines.

Evelyn Brent is simply transcendent, and the way that von Sternberg captures her is as good as almost anything he ever did with Marlene Dietrich. It's too bad her character weakens somewhat in a crucial moment, but it gave an extra layer of bittersweetness to the story. The fact that both Brent and Powell's characters' both ultimately see the honorable aspect of a man who loved his country is touching, and while the outer story is a little weaker, the ending is quite good.

Von Sternberg's use of lighting and close-ups, how he draws the emotion out of his cast and the big scenes, gives this old film a feeling of vibrancy and life, unlike many others from the era. Oh and lastly, the intertitles from Herman J. Mankiewicz were some of the best I've seen, a couple examples of which were:

"And so, with the flames of war crackling along a two-thousand mile front, troops bitterly needed to defend Russia played parade for the Czar."

And: "After a week - after thousands of men had spilled their blood to defend a few inches of earth - there came a lull between storms."

Overall, great film, and one to seek out.

Epic emotional tale from von Sternberg boasts superb performances from its three leads. German emigre Emil Jannings excels both as an imperious general and a totally broken shell of a man, and William Powell departs (briefly) forms his customarily dapper screen persona while Evelyn Brent simmers as a sultry revolutionary.

This is the ultimate in humility as you watch a former WWI Imperial Russian General go from giving orders to taking orders when the real-life roles get flipped. The General who is a man of such an imposing stature connects with a woman during war time, who has the goal of assassinating him, is overcome by her feelings for him and can't pull the trigger. Post war, he gets hired in a film by a director who was his military adversary. How did he go from top command to movie set extra? This was an entertaining silent film with the highlight for me watching the Russian general act out his former reality with such gusto, conviction and pride, something he never got to do in the throes of battle as he was on the losing side.

When this movie began, and Emil Jannings first appeared, I thought "Oh no! not another stagey old ham playing to the back row of the gallery." However, as the scene changed to Czarist Russia, so did Jannings performance. Instead of the twitchy old refugee living in a boarding house, we saw a upright, aristocratic soldier in control. From then on, the performance was impecable. Who could not feel sympathy for the General as he was betrayed by his country and his love and everything he stood for. Who also could not feel sympathy for the desparate revolutionaries trying to overthrow a decadent monarchy. The theatrical director who became a film director was also sympathetic as an artist caught up (like most participants of WWI) in a war that was not of his doing and that he really couldn't care less about. This film, made only 10 years after the revolution, said a lot about the plight of war refugees everywhere.