The Docks of New York

After the Depression hit I think it took Hollywood until the fucking 70s to really get back to these raw, honest depictions of poverty. Boozey and lovely.

My opinion kind of fluctuated while I was watching this. Sternberg can craft a great scene when he tries, but ultimately, The Docks of New York is light on those. It's a well shot but pretty average little romance film, with backwards gender politics.

The basic story is not especially noteworthy: a working-class romance. But it's more evolved than your average Hollywood silent. The characters go beyond the usual archetypes and feel more genuine and relatable. The performances are nicely understated, with only Olga Baclanova getting a wee bit hammy. The film has a naturalistic air to it, a kind of despair tempered by grim resignation and small hopes. Most striking is the photography, it's beautifully shot with some wonderful camera movement.

Quite impressive cinematography in this foggy picture to be sure, but one of its particular strengths is choosing to keep the story itself simple and grounded as it is. Knowing Sternberg, he could have tried to make this "Universal" à la Sunrise (cf. Salvation Hunters); conversely, knowing Hollywood, they could have played the seediness much more salaciously than the given of life it is here. By letting their status be what it is, our couple is given the room to look for a bit of sincerity.

Silent only by technicality; you can practically hear the talkie-grade performances leap off every frame. Pre-Code sensibilites make for a raw and believeable romance, even though the circumstances that guide it a long are somewhat contrived.

You can definitely see the extremely early noir elements, and the romance is somewhat interesting and unconventional, but I found it a bit dull at times and probably overlong. Still, it's very watchable and interesting to see some early building blocks of noir. Some of the camerawork and lighting choices are ahead of their time.

The use of lighting is fantastic, giving off this noir vibe which is weirdly not out of place even when the movie is trying to be "sweet". The narrative itself is charming when it's playing off of the dynamics of the two leads, but it lost steam with me when it starts applying murder and takes itself away from the broken psyche of its female lead, which I think should have been its core. It's not a horrible film persay, but underneath all the fine filmmaking is nothing special.

Viewed September 25, 2021. The world of The Docks of New York is taken by the contradictions between stasis and transience. George Bancroft is in town just for a night, and Betty Compson is stuck at a dead end, and that they end up in each other's arms might just be enough to break the cycle.

Another great film from Josef von Sternberg. The camera work was solid although it doesn't reach the heights of his greatest works. For such a basic story this had pretty good pacing. George Bancroft was decent but I liked him better in Underworld. Betty Compson was very expressive here and the highlight of the film.

With this melodramatic plot and broad characters, von Sternberg creates a thing of real beauty packed with grittiness, eroticism and emotional depth. Compson is exquisite. Bancroft is a big, wonderful brute. Olga Baclanova, who turns up later in "Freaks", plays Compson's friend.

88.50

Brilliantly shot blue collar romance with many complex camera moves, but the scenes of labour and toil depicting coal miners in the smokey bowels of ships have a resonance to them that the love affair simply can't match. It isn't that the romance is bad per se, it's just completely routine, and it's redeemed mostly by Sternberg's technical talent, which was far greater than most of his peers. The case for its greatness is overstated, but it's not totally without merit.

"Here, Hollywood, here's what I can do on my own. Now don't you want to hire me?" http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2015/11/episode-79-sternberg-before-dietrich.html "'We are SMART cinephiles!'" http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2015/12/episode-82-cinema-masters-vol-xi.html

Kingdom of fog. Fog as drunkness? Night shenanigans, a numbness of soul and character? Actors are very well observed, all is unsaid but the feelings burn underneath and are clear. It all seems very simple, the plot is. And yet... it's missing something. Clearly, one of the best cameraworks of silent cinema.

Some of the most spectacular and grandiously sweeping camerawork from the American silent era.

The main character is comically masculine, the female lead is basically just a prop, but it's a very enjoyable movie if you don't take it too seriously.

Cynical and dark yet rather uplifting. The silent film works very differently to a sound film - so much can be conveyed through body language and this film excels at this, showing our couple develop their romance through as much as what isn't said as what is displayed on the interstitial cards. The romance is a little unconventional too - neither character is necessarily likable on paper but on screen they exude a charm and a relatability. Great tracking shots too give life to the cramped sets.

Great silent movie by von Sternberg! I had to laugh a lot about the male lead, as he acts uber manly without a care in the world (except for the ending of course!). The bar scenes were great as well as the scenes with great contrast in lighting (eg. inside the ship 'of hell', outside the hotel room on the balcony, when the pastor arrives, etc.). Lots of fighting in this as well :D and loved the kind of saloon music which is sometimes used.

I think women and seamen don't mix.

One of the pinnacles of the silent era, von Sternberg's exquisite use of light and many-layered depth of field make Docks a feast for the eye--a magnificent tracking shot through the bar is one of the highlights. Bancroft possesses a subtle charm, while Compson communicates so much with little more than her eyes. The simple story shines in the moody atmosphere of the Bowery, the tumbledown saloon and apartments offering a rich and inventive backdrop.

Belongs beside City Lights and Sunrise as a movie that pioneered the language of romance on film. It fits the mold of the imminent sound era well: each character is distinct and vital, the acting is naturalistic, every scene is perfectly shot, the sets feel real and lived-in. Except for the ending, it's structured as well as any melodrama from the Golden Age of Sirk and Kazan. It's a movie that made music of understated passion in an era when overstatement was mostly how storytelling was done.

#756

A fragile and helpless woman is the victim of a burly stoker's testosterone-fueled night of fun, during which he objectifies her into a quick marriage, gets her framed for robbery, and she nearly takes the fall for murder. In the end what does she do? Submit. I will say that von Sternberg films it beautifully, the frame constantly bathed in shadow and packed with detail (particularly the raucous bar the majority of the film is set in). But the archaic gender roles in this movie are fucked up.

Quietly beautiful. Von Sternberg's direction feels anticipatory of Ophüls at times, which works wonderfully with the hazy, dreamlike atmosphere of its noir-ish stylings. I love the way the buildings near the docks are designed to feel like extensions of the ships.

Less swooningly romantic than Borzage, Murnau, or Griffith, but also consequentially less sentimental, more psychologically grounded and "realistic", which only makes it all the more poignant and moving. The scene where Compson is trying to thread the needle almost brought me to tears, all the while the film barely disguises that it's protagonist is essentially a sociopathic drunken bully. My favorite silent film yet, and definitely the one i'd recommend to fans who find them too melodramatic.

Tawdry and small and beautiful and heartbreaking. One of those few rapturous cinema experiences.

This is by far the best silent film I've seen. It seemed to draw from German Expressionism without going crazy, and the cinematography was beautiful. Furthermore, the acting wasn't overdone, like it is in every single other silent film I've seen, and there were no sequences where everything was sped up, like in every other silent film I've seen.

Well done film with some little touches to raise it above the fray, especially the solid acting, but not by a whole lot. Much of it is just your standard "lower class people in a bar" stereotypes and a solid ending doesn't make it more than a bit above average. Neither the story nor the characters feel really meaningful and the tone felt off, unable to completely balance drama with lightheartedness.

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