Toronto Silent Film Festival: THE LAST COMMAND (1928)

The Last Command is richly woven film tapestry centered on the emotional disintegration of an exiled Tsarist General reduced to playing bit parts in the Hollywood film-making machine. German actor Emil Jannings (seen in TSFF Faust 2011, Variete 2012 & Last Command 2014 ) won the first Academy Award as Best Actor for his role in this film (and the now lost Way of All Flesh) . Also starring the timeless Evelyn Brent and William Powell. 

Director Josef von Sternberg brilliantly and with great wit, send-ups the Hollywood machine. It features stunning virtuoso cinematography, grandly designed sets, effects and a rousing Russian Revoltution sequences.

A former Russian Imperial General flees his revolutionary ravaged country only to wind up a decade later in Hollywood as a lowly extra begging for work. His former revolutionary foe, now a film director, hires him to play a role in a film about the Russian Revolution. The General’s tenuous grasp of reality is broken and his emotional stability collapses in the face of the weight of his own personal history in that conflict. 

Live accompaniment by Morgan-Paige Melbourne

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