An aging hotel porter has been replaced by a stronger, younger, more efficient worker and demoted to the position of washroom attendant. Before, he used to be the first person to greet guests at the door, and now they don't even acknowledge his presence, treating him with as much humanity as they would a bathroom sink. He eats where others shit, suffers their abuses in the name of 'service'. In reality, such a person would die unnoticed, so beneath consideration is his lot in life. As a commentary not just on class prejudice but also on ageism, it is noted that the porter replaces the previous oldest hotel employee, who is now being tucked away in a senior center of sorts ostensibly thanks to the good will of the company. In the final, implausible end, when the porter miraculously inherits a fortune from a fortuitous encounter, the forgotten old men return to the hotel to dine luxuriously and make their former superiors cater to their whims. I can't recall a more heart-rending, pathetic, and downright depressing 'fairytale ending'.

Nice example of how filmmakers, disgruntled by narrative dictates that insist on a happy ending, will make visible the seams that barely contain their discontent.

"What interests the two authors of this intransigently absolute Kammerspiele [Carl Meyer and Lupu Pick] are the slow, heavy reactions. Many moments pass while the old man stares at the empty bed; many moments also while the girl spies on him in the narrow corridor. Every emotional reaction becomes significantly ponderous, as if these characters were not accustomed to expressing themselves" (Eisner, 182).

The revolution is the cruelest pimp.

The individuals of the big city streets have no sense of transcendence, they are only outer appearance, like the street itself, where so much is going on without anything really happening. The swirl of the characters resembles the whirl of atoms: they do not meet, but rather bump up against each other, they drift apart without separating. Instead of living connected with things, they sink down to the level of inanimate objects: of automobiles, walls, neon lights irrespective of time, flashing on and off . . . Love is copulation, murder is accident and tragedy never occurs. A wordless and soulless co-existence of directed automobiles and undirected desires... (Frankfurter Zeitung, 3 February, 1924).