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After having seen all three Paul Fejos films on the recent Criterion collection I settled on The Last Performance as being the best, with some reservation. The early scenes were impressive, especially the Erik The Great's hypnotism act with the audience! However, accurate information about this film seems to be scarce. Imdb gives it a 1927 release date. THE UNIVERSAL STORY by Clive Hirschhorn lists it as 1930. The book also differs in identifying the cast members and reverses the names of the two male supporting players from imdb.

But what's not to like? Conrad Veidt gives another one of his eerie performances, the camera work is excellent. But something seems to be missing. Is the the complete film? I'm aware that a talkie version was released later. For this imdb credits Bela Lugosi as dubbing the Hungarian language version. How accurate is this?

Any more impressions on this three-movie set?

Danny

I was thinking the same thing. We see Erik hypnotize members of the audience, but the hypnosis is dropped after that. I believe IMDB is incorrect, and is the only source I can find that says it was a 1927 film released in '29. I have heard (probably just apocryphal) that this was Veidt's test for the starring role of Dracula that was to be directed by Paul Leni.

Danny wrote:After having seen all three Paul Fejos films on the recent Criterion collection I settled on The Last Performance as being the best, with some reservation. The early scenes were impressive, especially the Erik The Great's hypnotism act with the audience! However, accurate information about this film seems to be scarce. Imdb gives it a 1927 release date. THE UNIVERSAL STORY by Clive Hirschhorn lists it as 1930. The book also differs in identifying the cast members and reverses the names of the two male supporting players from imdb.

I don't know where they got the 1927 date, but it's definitely incorrect--Film Daily of 16 August 1928 carried an article on page 6 noting that Fejos had just begun work on the project, then called "Erik the Great". Exhibitors' Daily Review of 21 September 1928 indicated that filming had been completed, but Film Daily on 23 November 1928 said that talking sequences in English, French and German were being filmed by Fejos.

This project was still being called "Erik the Great" as late as 17 May 1929, when Film Daily noted that it was one of four Mary Philbin pictures that Universal planned for the 1929-30 season. Under its final title The Last Performance, it opened in New York in late October or early November 1929. If I can find the general release date, I'll post it later.

EDIT: General release date for The Last Performance was 13 Oct. 1929. The Motion Picture News review of it gives a running time of 6,171 feet or 72 minutes.

-HA