Restored to a miraculously flicker-free picture and 5.1 orchestral sound, F. W. Murnau's story of a proud hotel doorman who is stripped of his uniform and demoted for being too old suffers from a falsely upbeat coda.
However, Karl Freund's ground-breaking and historically important cinematography can still take the breath away over 75 years on, especially in the expressionistic "drunken dream" sequence and some early Steadicam-style experiments.