Turns out it wasn't just Dietrich: the 1928 silent The Docks of New York would seem to indicate Josef von Sternberg transformed just about everyone who passed before his camera into exotic, alluring creatures of the night. On paper, he had his work cut out for him here, in that his subjects were those roughnecks working the ships pulling in and out of Manhattan's harbours. The burly Bill Roberts (George Bancroft) rises out of the steam and fog with plans of using his shoreleave to carouse and - who knows? - maybe even pick another fight or two at nearby watering hole The Sandbar; those plans, however, are thrown into comprehensive disarray after he and his crewmates haul a suicidal dame (Betty Compson) out of the drink. Drawn from a John Monk Saunders story with the altogether marvellous title The Dock Walloper, it opens with impressionistic scenes of maritime life that may have laid down a template for On the Town (maybe even On the Waterfront), but gradually reveals its true interest as human turbulence: the way the right look from the right person at the right moment can turn humdrum routine, a life, a whole world upside down. The tall, Baldwinesque Bancroft shapes up as practically the archetype of the loner male, his needs confined to a pack of smokes and the occasional hot toddy; Compson gets a full Hollywood makeover (new dress, hairstylist, spot lighting) and scrubs up mighty well for someone who starts the film wanting to end it all. Jules Furthman composed the funny, salty titlecards ("I've sailed the seven seas, but I've never seen a craft as trim as you" remains one of the movies' greatest pick-up lines), but this is one of those silents that almost doesn't need words, and really does suggest we lost something the instant sound came in. It is, finally, all about that look, and the longing and desire that can propel us on a radically different course at a rapid rate of knots.
The Docks of New York is currently streaming via YouTube.
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