The Last Command (1928)

Josef von Sternberg's "The Last Command"

After the major success of 1927's "Underworld," Josef von Sternberg was given free reign by Paramount to make whatever picture he liked. With this free reign, he chose a script by Lajos Biro entitled "The General." This particular script was loosely inspired by true events. Renouned German director Ernst Lubitsch had met a General in the Imperial Russian Army named Theodore A. Lodigensky during a visit to Russia. He met this General once again in New York, where Lodigensky had opened a Russian restaurant after fleeing the communist revolution. Lubitsch encountered the General a third time in Hollywood, where Lodigensky appeared in full uniform looking for work as an extra for $7.50 a day. Lubitsch later told this anecdote to Lajos Biro, who wrote the screenplay about it. Sternberg took the script and adapted it to the screen with significant additions and alterations to the plot. 

The plot consists of a former Russian general named Sergius Alexander looking for work as a Hollywood extra, just like Lodigensky. A director named Leo Andreyev spots Alexander in photographs as he looks for actors to be in his next film. At the beginning of the film, Sternberg makes a point to illustrate the amount of power this director has. This is demonstrated by the numerous people holding us lights for his cigarrette. Sternberg also makes a point to note how powerful the film industry is with his opening title card, "The Magic Empire of the Twentieth Century! The Mecca of the World!"

We then flash back ten years to Czarist Russia in the midst of the Revolution. Alexander, who is Grand Duke and the Czar's cousin, is told that two actors who have been entertaining the troops have been identified as dangerous revolutionaries. It is important to note that these two revolutionaries are actors. They use acting as a way of surviving in this Russian emipre - just as Alexander uses acting to get by in the modern empire that is Hollywood. The two actors, Leo Andreyev (the powerful director in the current day), and Natalie Dabrova are brought before Alexander. He keeps Dabrova but has Andreyev arrested after whipping him across the face. This act of cruelty by Alexander creates in the viewer a sense of justication for what is about to unfold in the current timeline. We feel that Alexander deserves to be abused by the now-director. With this flashback, we see a mirror of the present. The actor and the commanders have now switched places. 

Another element of note about acting comes in the form of Emil Jennings's acting. Emil, who plays Alexander, is a renouned German actor. Sternberg utilizes Jenning's masterful theatricality to broadcast the performative nature of power through Alexander. In the beginning, we saw the great General at his lowest. We even see him continually twitching his head in the beginning as he explains that it is a twitch resulting from a great shock he experienced in the war. Now, through flashback, we see him mighty, boisterous, and powerful. This power is once again referred by Sternberg through Alexander's surround company eager to light his cigarette for him (just like Andreyev in the beginning as the director). 

Alexander becomes intruiged by Dabrova and keeps her with him. Through their continued interactions, we begin to see a change in their behavior. Behind closed doors, Alexander displays his sweeter side to Dabrova. He gives her a necklace, thanks her for her company, and talk freely to her about his love for Russia. In Alexander, Dabrova begins to see the same love of Russia that is in her. The two fall in love. This turn of events displays the illusions of the public self. Alexander is a stern and hard General in public, but presents a completely different side to himself to Dabrova and to the viewer. The viewer starts to feel empthaty towards a man they hated in the beginning. 

Alexander and Dabrova's train they are travelling in gets captured by the Bolsheviks. Instead of having Alexander shot just like the other officers, Dabrova pretends to despise him and suggests they have him stoak coal into the locomotive all the way to Petrograd, where he will be publically hanged. Dabrova then intoxicates the passengers and helps him escape. After Alexander jumps off, he watches as the train tumbles off a nearby bridge into the icy river below - and in that moment develops his head twitch. Just like with Alexander, the theme of shifting identity can be found in Dabrova. Even though she was a true revolutionary, she had to put on a public self in order to save Alexander's life. We once again are confronted with a contrast between the public and private self. This also plays into the recurring motif of the 'actor' - as everyone must 'perform' to others. The actors must act in their profession to survive (all three of them), Alexander must act out the role of General and hide his inner, softer self, and Dabrova must act out wrathful vengeance in order to sway the public toward her desired goals.

Back in the current day, Alexander is reduced to poverty and barely scratching by as a Hollywood extra. Alexander tells one of the studio dressers that the metal on his uniform is in the wrong spot. The dresser scoffs and says that he's worked on over twenty Russian films and knows his way around a Russian uniform. With the continued theme of the actor, we are now brought to the world's stage for acting, Hollywood. With the characters 'acting' throughout the film, we are shown just how inauthentic their public selves can be. Here, we are shown by Sternberg the total inauthenticity of Hollywood. Andreyev inacts this inauthenticity with his picture. He foreces Alexander to play the part of a harsh and villianous general to a group of dispirited men. With this, the director has ultimate power over narrative and bends that narrative to his own perspective. These stories and performances happening in front of the camera are complete fabrications of reality (regardless to how close to the truth they really are). This brings about the ultimate theme of fact vs fiction, as we ponder what is real and what is fake. The same can ever be said about the war in the flashback. In particular, one scene demonstrating this involves the czar asking Alexander to put on an offensive just for the show of it (which the General declines out of fear of needlessly losing more of his men). The constructs of war, politics, and even Hollywood are being questioned by Sternberg as inauthentic actors, actively hiding the reality underneath.

While Alexander is playing his scene, a soldier tries to incite a mutiny. Andreyev has Alexander whip the solider in the face, just as he did in the past. With this, Sternberg now shifts the ultimate inauthenticity of these theatrics to someone actually real. Through this messiness of reality and illustion, we are now contemplating the thinly veiled line between what is real and what is fake. Just like the film itself, the story is constructed from real events. However, the messy construction of these real events creates a difficult web of understanding to parce through. This is much in the same way of life, as we are never able to wade through the melange of truth and fiction. The same can be said for the mind of Alexander as he begins to lose grip on reality. He begins to imagine himself genuienly on the battlefield again in a moment of hysteria. He passionately urges his men to fight until he collapses, dead. Moved, Andreyev tells his assistant, "He was more than a great actor - he was a great man." Just like all of us, Alexander was an actor - not only in his profession, but to the public. These vibrations between fact and fiction, real and fake, performances and genuinity create a contradiction that Sternberg loves to instill in his films. These contradictions force the viewer to realize that things are not black and white and more importantly, someone can be both a villian and a good man.