For this assignment, you will examine the use of lighting, mise-en-scene, and editing in The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, Germany, 1924). Your task for this paper is to compose an argument regarding how and why the film employs certain filmmaking techniques and to what effect. To justify your claims, you must engage with Siegfried Kracauer’s writing on Weimar Cinema (as discussed in his essay “Caligari”)
You should plan to focus your discussion of the film on one or two representative sequences that you feel best illustrate your claim about the film’s motivation for employing these techniques. To guide your thinking, consider the following questions:
Which scenes feature significant variations in lighting, composition, and editing? How do these variations provide important plot clues to the viewer re: the doorman’s “decline”?
How do these techniques signal certain transformations in characters’ emotional states and relations?
How do these techniques draw on the characteristics of Weimar cinema (both Kammerspiele and Expressionist trends)? How are the techniques used to enhance the ambiguous ending of the film?
In what ways do the lighting/composition/editing techniques reflect the politics of films made during the Weimar period as described by Siegfried Kracauer?
Suggested Thesis template: The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, Germany, 1924) uses x lighting technique, y composition, and z editing style to create [insert some “effect” here]. During [A] scene and [B] scene, these elements [are intensified and/or shift dramatically], which [uphold and/or depart from] Siegfried Kracauer’s claim that Weimar cinema is [insert Kracauer’s claim that you wish to focus on].
