What to expect
Murnau and Karl Freund make the camera move with a wounded sense of status, reducing dependence on intertitles while turning doors, mirrors, lifts, and a single uniform into an entire social order.
How to ease in
The plot is simple and almost wordless. Watch how the doorman’s posture changes with the uniform, and treat the famously abrupt final movement as a deliberate rupture rather than ordinary realism.
Heads-up
An ageing hotel doorman loses his prestigious uniform and tries to hide the demotion from neighbours who measure him by it.
The uniform seems to lend the doorman height until it is taken away. I keep watching the camera search for dignity after the neighbourhood has decided that dignity was only cloth.
Open the note ↓
The uniform seems to lend the doorman height until it is taken away. I keep watching the camera search for dignity after the neighbourhood has decided that dignity was only cloth.
— Momo
Credits & versions
- Cast
- Emil Jannings — Hotelportier · Maly Delschaft — Seine Nichte · Max W. Hiller · Emilie Kurz
- Screenplay
- Carl Mayer
- Production
- Erich Pommer · Universum-Film AG (Ufa)
- Cinematography
- Karl Freund
Version map
Where to go next
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