The Docks of New York (1928, Josef von Sternberg) (Patreon)

77/100

Second viewing, last seen 2003. Just raw emotion and stunning imagery, bulldozing past my standard desire for something more dramatically complex than this film ever attempts (or has any apparent desire) to be. I remembered breathtaking arrangements of light and shadow out by the water's edge, and those did in fact once again leave me mentally gasping; much of the film was shot indoors, though, on magnificently ramshackle sets*, and Von Sternberg fashions a harsher sort of beauty from the steamer's bowels, the Sandbar's raucous clientele, the seagull-infested room where Mae recovers. Betty Compson, without doing anything overt, turns in one of the silent era's most quietly affecting performances—I'd perhaps go so far as to deem it "modern" in its restraint, though that suggests a value judgment vis-à-vis other modes (including the one George Bancroft employs here, very effectively) that I don't intend. It's just remarkable to watch her act with only her eyes and occasionally the slightest tug of her lips, even when she's not in close-up. Only the very perfunctory narrative prevents me from ranking Docks among the greatest late silents; Mae taking the blame for Lou killing her husband, provoking Bill's return, should constitute an entire act and instead gets resolved almost instantly, which makes it feel strangely irrelevant. Though it does give Olga Baclanova an opportunity to be electrifyingly rueful. Anyway, films from 1928 in particular tend to make me feel acutely, while I'm watching them, that the advent of sound was a huge mistake, and this one evinces a simple purity that's hard to deny. 

* I've just discovered that the docks, too, were constructed by Von Sternberg, which blows my mind (but also explains the precision of those compositions).