We added the happy ending because without it the film would have been too much like real life.
— [Producer] Eric Pommer
Film criticism at The New Yorker started with a bang: the first movie reviewed in the first issue, dated February 21, 1925, was the German director F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh, a remarkable drama of working life which I consider one of the ten greatest films in the history of cinema. The magazine’s reviewer immediately recognized Murnau’s movie as “a superb adventure into new phases of film direction,” adding, “We have never seen the camera made so pliable to moods and moments.” The judgment was notably forward-looking and turned out to be exemplary. Its passionate discernment and its attention to developments in the art of cinema—and, especially, to direction—set the tone for the magazine’s illustrious inaugural year of film criticism.
— Richard Brody (The New Yorker)
Synopsis: 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.