Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.
Murnau's masterwork is celebrated above all for its revolutionary cinematography — the unchained, fluid 'entfesselte Kamera' (unchained camera) that dispensed almost entirely with intertitles, letting purely visual storytelling carry the narrative. Jannings delivers a towering physical performance as the humiliated doorman, earning his reputation as one of silent cinema's greatest actors. The film's conception is strikingly original: a near-intertitle-free silent film that predates the full articulation of the technique. The plot itself is simple and effective, a tight social parable about dignity and class. The infamous tacked-on happy ending — added at studio insistence and openly mocked by Murnau himself with a sardonic intertitle — is widely regarded as an artistic compromise that undermines the film's emotional honesty, earning a below-average score for Ending.