Silent movies - The Last Performance

Two weeks ago, we had "the profile", today I'm bringing "the eyes" back - Conrad Veidt.

The movie is from 1929 and it's called "The Last Performance".

Let's start with the plot and some spoilers.

Stage magician and hypnotist Erik the Great is in love with his pretty and much younger assistant Julie, but she doesn't really seem to be in love with him although he regards himself to be engaged to her.

One night, a burglar enters Erik's suite to steal food. Everyone including Julie and Buffo, Erik's second assistant, come running, but Erik assures them everything is alright and even offers Mark a job as his assistant on suggestion of Julie.

Erik plans to announce his engagement on Julie on her 18th birthday, but before the celebration starts, the jealous Buffo tells him about the secret love between Julie and Mark.

So instead, Erik announces the engagement of Julie and Mark, much to the guests' surprise and Buffo's anger.

During their next stage appearance, Buffo gets killed in a chest and sword trick Mark performs.
At the murder trial (with Sam de Grasse of villain fame from four movies I covered before as the prosecutor), Julie implores Erik to help Mark.

Erik asks the judge to let him perform the trick. He shows how he deceived the audience into thinking that Mark did the deadly stab by showing a bloody sword, but how actually he killed Buffo with a dagger he had hidden in his sleeve.
He explains having hoped that Julie might be coming back to him if he got rid of the disloyal Buffo and took Mark out of the picture by blaming him.
Then he kills himself with that dagger in front of a shocked audience.

Veidt was 36, Philbin was 27 at the time. Actually, this movie came out only one year after they had been a very believable couple in "The Man Who Laughs" (a post of mine that sadly didn't get any comments at all although I thought the movie was really fascinating).
So I didn't get the ick feeling from this that I've had from other movies before, not just because I'm a Veidt fan, even if they put the makeup and silver temples on thick to drive the idea of a huge age gap home. 

The movie was made on the set of "The Phantom of the Opera" and had two versions. The one that was part sound - we are at the end of the silent movie era and Veidt went back to Germany after this film - is considered lost (in the Hungarian version Bela Lugosi dubbed for Veidt).
The silent one included scenes that are considered lost.
I watched the print with Danish title cards which has a runtime of about an hour, so maybe some of the development is a little rushed.
I read there was one scene in which Erik had a breakdown. That must have worked well because it's hard to believe how he could have stayed so calm throughout the whole movie, well, except at the end of course.

Although it was quite predictable that Julie would end up with Mark, I definitely wasn't rooting for them even if that was probably what they wanted the audience to do.
Oh look, the old guy taking advantage of the young girl who only stayed because he had done so much for her.
I think I could have felt that more if Erik had been played by an older actor.
This way, I just felt sorry for him, well, until he killed Buffo. He should have fired him because he was annoying throughout the movie, but killing was a bit over the top.
I also didn't like Mark from his first whiny scene after Erik surprised him in his suite.
Another thing that made me wonder was how no one seems to have considered Buffo's death to be an accident. After all Buffo could/should have left the chest during the sword stabbing. A clear failure of Mark's lawyer.

So the highlight for me was really Conrad Veidt. In my opinion, they could have made more of the movie if they hadn't just concentrated on his sinister, hypnotic look that much. Like I said, though, maybe the missing footage would have made a difference.
Why some call this a horror film I don't know, by the way.
Anyhow, thanks to him I enjoyed the movie anyway while the other three didn't convince me that much. It made me even wonder how Julie's and Mark's story would have continued, they both didn't seem very capable to deal with life.

Would I watch it again? I think I would, but there are more Veidt movies to watch!


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Last Performance (1929) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, August 20, 2014
2. "Monique classique": The Last Performance (1929). On: Conrad Veidt Forever