JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

clanciai 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.

romanorum1 The last year of silent movies saw so many classics that old-timers of long ago thought that Hollywood had peaked. After all, in 1927 there was "Metropolis," "Sunrise," "The General," and "Napoleon." In 1928 there was "The Passion of Joan of Arc," "The Crowd," "Steamboat Bill, Jr." and "The Cameraman." Josef von Sternberg's drama, "The Last Command," certainly belongs to this group. The Austrian-born director's classic focuses on former Russian Grand Duke Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings), who immigrated to the US following the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the movie, Hollywood director Lev Andreyev (William Powell) casts the ex-aristocrat as a general in creating a movie about the revolution of ten years earlier.A lengthy flashback, which occupies at least one-half of the film, shows the Grand Duke's high status as it was in 1917. The man was no less than the commander of the Russian armies on the Eastern Front in World War I. Then revolution breaks out, along with all of its chaos, which sets up professional and personal tragedies for the imperial general. Somehow he does manage to escape embattled Russia, winding up in Hollywood. Impoverished, he survives as an extra. The Hollywood director, Andreyev, was a former Russian revolutionary opposed to the conservative Czar Nicholas and former Grand Duke. In former times the latter had even struck the revolutionary and sent him to prison. Now, ironically, Sergius has to take orders – a last command – from the director! The movie was based upon real events, as a former Russian general named Theodore Lodigensky really did find some work in Hollywood after fleeing the Bolshevik uprising after World War I. Jannings is outstanding as the traumatized general – complete with a head-twitch – a tragic character who tumbled a long way down from his high perch and who eventually becomes insane. Thus he shows his range, from authoritativeness to infirmity to dignity. The Swiss-born actor would win the very first Academy Award for Best Actor (1927-1928). Evelyn Brent, who certainly passes as a Russian, is fair enough in the role of revolutionary Natalie Dabrova, lover of Andreyev who later falls for the ruined aristocrat. Finely cast is William Powell as the revenge-minded director of Electra Studios. Note how impeccable he appears in his light suit. Powell was made for sound movies, though, and not only would he easily make the transition from the silent screen era, but would also become a major star. Movie pluses are the well-constructed scenes of the cataclysmic revolution in Petrograd, which may have been powerful eye-openers for 1920s audiences. The Lionel trains are used in certain scenes, but they work well enough for the time. However, there are two instances where one can question the realism of the picture: (1) revolutionary Natalie's supposed falling in love of the Grand Duke (although he does love Russia) and (2) the last line, where the Bolshevik director proclaims, "He was more than a great actor, he was a great man." It is quite arduous to believe that a maligned Communist – with extreme political leanings – would make such a grand statement about the Czar's cousin and Grand Duke! Nonetheless the film is a good one.

howardeisman Sure the absence of spoken dialogue, flimsy sets and obvious miniatures mark this movie as an antique, but it does grab you. It is easy to disregard the antique technical aspects of the film, but the psychology of the protagonists are equally out of date. Did people in 1928 swallow the unlikely behavior of the protagonists as reflecting real life or did they see it as necessary plot components of a fantasy. I suspect the latter.William Powell was most naturalistic in his acting. He played a calculating, humorless, dictatorial movie director. The antithesis of Nick Charles. Jannings got a chance to strut his famous histrionics, and he puts on quite a show. Brent could be a smoldering Garbo one minute and a Joan Crawford flapper the next. Her behavior was designed for script purposes and did not simulate any fully fleshed out character.Director Joseph von Sternberg (nee Jonas Sternberg)and Jannings reached their career heights with The Blue Angel two years later. Von Sternberg could really stretch out a quiet, actionless scene and fill it with tension. He was successful in Hollywood for a while and then his career crashed. Jannings became a Nazi in Germany and slid into obscurity and early death after WWII.The movie can be gripping. It is well done, but the characters are acting out a movie style fantasy that is not longer palatable. I couldn't suspend my disbelief. Hey, times change.

pontifikator The story is a romantic tale inspired by an actual Russian general who fled his country after the rebellion of the Communists in 1917. The story starts in 1928 showing William Powell as Lev Andreyev, Hollywood mogul casting a film about the revolution. He picks an actor based on the actor's head shot; the actor is former Grand Duke Sergius Alexander (played by Emil Jannings), formerly the most powerful man in Russia, head of the Russian forces fighting against the insurrectionists. The story then goes to flashback, where we see the Grand Duke inspecting his troops, watched secretly by Andreyev and Natalie Dabrova (played by Evelyn Brent) as they plot his overthrow and assassination.Mr. Jannings won the first Best Actor Oscar for this role. "The Last Command" was directed by the incomparable Josef von Sternberg, who also directed "The Blue Angel" (again with Mr. Jannings), "Morocco," "Shanghai Express," "Blonde Venus," "Crime and Punishment," and more, many with Marlena Dietrich as his leading lady. Mr. Jannings was considered among the best actors of his time, and he shows why in this movie. Evelyn Brent plays a revolutionist conspirator with Mr. Powell in 1917, but the Grand Duke captures them, sends Andreyev to jail and Dabrova to the Duke's bedroom. It turns out that both the Grand Duke and Madam Dabrova want the same thing -- what's best for Russia, and he turns her to his point of view and seduces her. Or he seduces her and turns her to his point of view. In any event, he's a powerful man with a powerful personality, and she soon sees things his way.This is a tragedy, and the Grand Duke's power turns against him when the revolutionists win, capture him, and send him off to be hanged. Dabrova secures his release, but, as the Grand Duke later puts it, he suffers a shock and ends up in Hollywood as a bit player. The tables get turned when Andreyev turns up as the director of a movie about the revolution, and Andreyev casts the general as the general in the movie. Because it is a tragedy, things go badly for our hero the Grand Duke, but von Sternberg gives us a bitterly happy ending out of it all. The three leading actors all give star turns, but for me the direction by von Sternberg is the star of this film. His long, lingering portraits, particularly of Ms. Brent, showed the emotion and depth of the characters. There are some plot points that don't quite make sense, but overall the movie still holds my interest after all these years. I noticed that Herman J. Mankiewicz did the titles. There is a rumor that in the vote for best actor for the first Academy Award, the actual winner was Rin Tin Tin. The Academy (correctly, I think) decided that awarding the Oscar to a dog would make the award seem less than serious, and the first award for Best Actor went to runner-up Emil Jannings for his work in "The Last Command" and "The Way of All Flesh." Herman J. Mankiewicz was a well-known writer, well- known for often biting the hands that fed him in Hollywood. Another rumor is that as punishment for one of his many sins he was ordered to write a script for one of the many Rin Tin Tin movies, so he turned in a script where the dog carried a baby into a burning house. The Mankiewicz family has a glorious history in Hollywood, and I recommend reading up on them.I note that Jack Raymond as the cigar-chomping assistant director to Andreyev is a dead ringer for Josef von Sternberg.In the movie being made by Andreyev, we see extras being assigned costumes and doing make up to play Russian army troops. The extras were in fact extras assigned costumes and doing make up to play extras playing Russian army troops.Ms. Brent's costumes as the 1917 revolutionist were contemporary with 1928, a situation which she repeated in "The Mating Call," a movie she made the same year which was also set in 1917. I highly recommend "The Mating Call." Herman J. Mankiewicz has an uncredited role in and did the titles for "The Mating Call." Mr. Mankiewicz repeated this role in Citizen Kane.