Based presumably on Gogol's “The Overcoat,” The Last Laugh is a study of the importance society attaches to uniforms. When the elderly and proud hotel doorman at the Hotel Atlantic is demoted to lavatory attendant and stripped of his uniform, he is humiliated and taunted by relatives and neighbors who formerly respected him. Emil Jannings' expressionistic use of gesture, and F. W. Murnau's emphasis on ideas through repeated images and angle shots, give a humble story tragic stature. But a happy and unlikely ending turns tragedy into comedy. Carl Mayer's script was developed in collaboration with Jannings, Murnau and cameraman Karl Freund to exploit the possibilities of the moving camera, resulting in effects which were then new: shot on sets specially constructed to allow for a traveling camera mounted on trucks or cranes, The Last Laugh was a film that was shaped during, not after, the shooting. Prolonged stretches of uncut images created a kind of continuous narration new to cinema. Writing in 1929 as a critic, Marcel Carné noted that in The Last Laugh, “The camera on a trolly glides, rises, zooms or weaves where the story takes it. It is no longer fixed, but takes part in the action and becomes a character in the drama.”