The Last Command
Emil Jannings gives an Academy Award-winning performance as a Czarist general, displaced from his Russian homeland and reduced to work as an extra in a Hollywood film directed by his old enemy of revolutionary days. Von Sternberg cuts back to the general's grandeur and his downfall in the Russian Revolution, but his focus remains on the demeaning existence of a Hollywood extra and the unglamorous film factories which manufacture real-life heartbreak.

“The Last Command is as savage in its criticism of Hollywood's movie-making and its callous treatment of the film extra as any film ever made. The Paramount studio officials at first refused to have the film released, considering Sternberg's conception of Hollywood untruthful and heartless."