Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

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.

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.

Michael_Elliott Last Command, The (1928) **** (out of 4) Marvelous drama about a former Russian General (Emil Jannings) who after the war fled the country and ended up in America where ten years later he's working as an extra in Hollywood. A director (William Powell) is making a movie about that Russian war when he comes across a picture of the former General and recognizes him as the man who threw him in prison years earlier. This here certainly turned out to be something truly special and a lot of the credit has to go to director von Sternberg but we also have Jannings turning in a magnificent performance, which ended up winning him an Oscar. The story also won a Oscar and it's easy to see why because the screenplay pretty much contains ever bit of emotion you could possibly want. There's some nice laughs, a pretty good love story, some political drama and some incredibly tense scenes. What shocked me so much is that it seems like von Sternberg wanted the first twenty-minutes or so to gain sympathy for our main character as we see him obviously destroyed by life and working for peanuts as an extra. When then get the grand flashback to when he was pretty much the ruler of Russia and how his encounter with a woman (Evelyn Brent) pretty much changes the rest of his life. The story is part tragedy but it also works incredibly well as a character study because one can't help but love this guy and feel sorry for the pain he goes through. The "Rosebud" from CITIZEN KANE is perhaps the greatest secret in film history but I think Jannings' nervous head shake has to be the second one. Early on we're told that this head shake is due to some accident and when it's finally revealed what that accident was it comes as a great shock and is an incredibly powerful sequence. The final thirty-minutes of the movie is like an out of control train, which is funny because the majority of the footage takes place on-board a train. As the revolution begins the film starts to pick up energy and drama and it just keeps growing and growing as the thing moves along. It's clear von Sternberg planned it this way because he just keeps pounding the viewer with one twist after another and the suspense just keeps building until that final secret is revealed. The aftermath as the story picks back up in Hollywood is yet another powerful turn and will certainly leave an impact on the viewers. Jannings is marvelous in the main role as he really is playing two characters and he does a terrific job with both of them. I was very moved by his performance as the broken down extra because he tells us everything we need to know the first time we see his face. The eyes can be a very powerful thing for an actor and Jannings tells us so much with the look on his face. The power and emotion in his eyes isn't something they can teach at an acting school and the veteran certainly knows how to use his. Powell's role isn't nearly as flashy but he too is quite good. Brent is even more impressive here than she was in the director's previous film UNDERWORLD. Her character goes through a lot of changes as well and I thought the actress nailed each one of the emotions and manages to have us want to see her dead one second only to then change our opinions on her a split second later. THE LAST COMMAND is certainly one of the most powerful movies from this era with a final thirty-minutes that rank among the best I've ever seen.

LordBlacklist The Last Command was one of the best movies I've ever seen. Chronicling the rise and fall of a Russian dictator with so much power, emotion, and humanity that it is very easy to forget this is a silent picture. Emil Jannings as General Dolgurucki shows such mad obsession for power over everyone and everything, only to be betrayed by his entire country and left a sad withering shell of the man he once was. The scene where Jannings gives his "last command" was amazing in his portrayal of the sad old man reliving his glory days. The flaring of his eyes, the strength of his stature, the passion of his words are a fitting end to a great man's life. It make sense that the general would die on a movie set since it was the only plausible place left that he could die an honorable death on the battle field. Perhaps The Last Command is a portrait of the first method actor, but that would sell it short because it is about so much more than that. Every character seems to have a few tricks up their respective sleeves, or skirts. One of the running themes is that people are capable of anything, and it shows to a great extent. The general goes through such a physical change from stately dictator to grubby extra that it is hard to believe that each end of the spectrum ever had anything to do with the other.