You won't be disappointed!

i must have seen a different film!!

Best movie ever!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Bill Roberts is a stoker on a ship. While in port for one night, he finds prostitute Mae attempting to drown herself. He rescues her and steal some clothes for her. They spend the night at the bar. He tries to convince her that life is worth living and marries her. She abandons the life of prostitution. She hates that he's going back to his ship and struggles against her suicidal thoughts. He can't take his job and jumps ship. He returns to find Mae has been arrested. She gets sentenced 30 days for the stolen clothes. He arrives in time to take the blame. He gets 60 days and she vows to wait for him. It's a tough romance of two people with very little who find salvation with each other. It's simple but touching. The style isn't too melodramatic and the acting is surprisingly natural. I wouldn't call it gritty but it has a sense of the downtrodden.

I didn't know anything about George Bancroft 48 hours ago, but after watching him star in two films in as many days, I'm impressed enough to seek out more of his work. Betty Compson was also terrific in a film that I can't easily fit in any category. I set out to watch it for the cinematography which puts it in the proto-noir category but I quickly found myself interested in what the actors were doing in the shadows and fog of this silent film. Unfortunately the story itself was something out of a Laurel & Hardy comedy but without the slapstick and jokes to help us suspend our disbelief. But you'll probably enjoy it, it's better than your average date movie.

Initially it was very easy to forget you were watching a narrative film and to just imagine it was a documentary maker's homage to the seedier docklands of New York. Down in the ship's boiler room - George Bancroft and Clyde Cook didn't seem like actors, they actually looked like stokers, dreaming of going ashore. And the eerie silhouette of the girl on the pier - then the splash!! I really think that "The Docks of New York" is a triumph of von Sternberg's visual artistry. Mists and shadows, especially compelling was the scene when Bancroft carried the bedraggled Compson along the waterfront to her shabby room.Just as he had given Evelyn Brent's career a new lease of life, von Sternberg proceeded to do the same thing for Betty Compson. Although "The Docks of New York" was advertised as her comeback picture, according to Betty, she had never been away. In a chapter devoted to her in "From Hollywood" by DeWitt Bodeen, he chronicles her ups and downs of the twenties. She divorced her husband, director James Cruze, and was immediately besieged by creditors (to do with his bankruptcy). She then realised most of the major studios thought she was a has been but instead of taking it to heart, she went over to Chadwick, a poverty row studio and worked so hard she got back into shape and once again had the big studios bidding for her services. Another actor von Sternberg rescued was George Bancroft, who spent most of the 20s as a Western badman albeit with a hearty laugh. First casting him as the charismatic gangster in "Underworld" then as the burly stoker, Bill Roberts, in "The Docks of New York". Bancroft was larger than life!!!The story is simple, Roberts rescues a prostitute after she has thrown herself in the river. Initially hoping to paint the town red before departing the next morning, he takes a shine to Mae's vulnerableness and convinces her a good time is better than a watery grave. After carousing at the dockside tavern Bill gets carried away and proposes to Mae and after much coaxing she accepts - but she is serious as is the parson "Hymn Book Harry" (Gustav Von Seyffertitz) whose withering look upon those assembled tells you just what he thinks of them. Come the morning Bill is preparing to leave, treating the whole thing as a joke, but back on the ship......The music is wonderful with an orchestral score that has a real feel for the gritty reality of the docks - it also incorporates popular songs of the day "A Bird in a Gilded Cage", "The Sidewalks of New York" etc. I should have realised it was the brilliant Robert Israel, my favourite composer of silent film scores.Making just as much of a dazzling impression is Baclanova as a distinctly unglamorous waterside worker. She is married to Bill's brutish boss, but tells Mae "I was decent too - until I got married"!!!

One of the less obvious differences between sound and silent pictures, is that whereas in a sound picture the director will set up a scene, prep the actors and then call action, in a silent the director could (and usually would) continue to direct even while the cameras were rolling. Of course it's hard to tell how much this difference affected the finished product in real terms. However, with a director like Joseph "von" Sternberg, who demanded a complete (and indeed tyrannical) control over every aspect of the image, the ability to carry on shouting at his cast and crew right through the take was probably a considerable bonus in fine-tuning his elaborate visual style.With Docks of New York being a late silent, it has more or less as much fluidity of movement and camera angle as your average sound flick. However there is an extreme complexity in the movement of a kind that you only really saw in Sternberg's silents. Take for example those lengthy dolly shots through the bar, with extras moving across the shot as the camera goes in or out. Those movements across the screen look haphazard, but they are carefully timed to complement the camera movement and give a rising tide of franticness. To arrange everyone so precisely there must have been almost as much activity behind the camera as in front of it. You could do a shot like that in a talkie, but it would require copious reheasing, and I don't think that's something they tended to bother with in the early sound era, what with the all the other obstacles they had to overcome. It's certainly true that Sternberg used to spend most of his set-up time sorting out the lighting schemes, rather than giving any detailed priming to his cast.Sternberg's layered patterns of movement not only add to the aesthetic quality of this picture, but they enhance its atmosphere. The barroom scenes in particular have a spectacularly chaotic feel to them. The fact that every edge of the room is filled by a mass of moving bodies makes it impossible to figure out the size and layout of the place. But for all his visual lavishness, Sternberg himself admitted to caring little about stories, and as a result the narrative gets a little lost amidst all the shadows. This is even given the fact that Docks of New York is overburdened by intertitles.Sternberg had also yet to fully develop his stylised and dappled lighting patterns that can be seen in his talkies. Here that's a good thing, because it means his camera shows the actors up a little better. And there are some fine performances here worth capturing. George Bancroft gives a superbly realist turn, looking every inch the rough but basically good-hearted stoker. Betty Compson is also nicely subtle, in a slow and measured performance with plenty of under-the-surface emoting. An honourable mention should go to Clyde Cook, who plays Bancroft's buddy Steve. Cook was an Australian slapstick comic, once the star of his own shorts but by this time doing supporting work in features. He is perhaps a little too clownish for the sombre tone of Docks of New York, but entertaining to watch and capable of a spot of straight acting when the occasion demands.The oevre of Herr Sternberg can generally be summed up as pretty to look at but dramatically unengaging. As a silent picture, where the director can put his all into the image without having to worry about the business of dialogue, Docks of New York is just that little bit prettier to look at. And yet as one lacking in a strong narrative drive it is also that little bit more dramatically unengaging. It's a shame, because this is potentially one of the most poignant tales he ever dealt with. Bancroft and Compson recognise this, and play it appropriately, but the director remains a hard-boiled cynic who knows a few camera tricks.