Although Emil Jannings won the first Best Actor Academy Award for the original silent version of this film released in 1927. Akim Tamiroff was not outdone when the sound version was released in 1940. Only two scenes survive from the original, directed by the great Victor Fleming, but the staging of the ending is better in the later version directed by Louis King. Only a heart of stone will fail to be moved by the powerful ending, which stresses the fragility of the present, the irretrievability of the treasured past and the inevitability of death.
Review of The Way of All Flesh
