The Docks of New York, a Josef von Sternberg Silent Film

     If anything spoils too many Hollywood films it's the Hollywood ending.  The obsessive desire to end a movie on a light note, even when the narrative thrust points differently towards more complexity, has either ruined quite a few otherwise good films or at least asphyxiated some movies' potential greatness.  

     Sometimes a film comes through all the way to the end, as when Joan Crawford in Humoresque (1946) walks into the sea, unnoticed by a nearby man walking his dog, and then the dog senses the tragedy--a powerful finale without which the film would've been just good, but maudlin, rather than great.

     I get the impression some directors were pressured by higher-ups to impose "happy endings," even jarring out of place ones, on films hardly headed in that direction, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Orson Welles' second film, an infamous case in point.  The film's grim, but logical, original ending no longer exists, as Welles's cut was destroyed.  A substitute "all is well" ending was shot without Welles's approval or participation.  The ability of businessmen who don't know shit about art to fuck up masterpieces should never be underestimated, or forgiven.  

     This brings me to a film with moments of greatness: The Docks of New York (1928), a silent film directed by Austrian Josef von Sternberg.  A stoker, Bill Roberts (George Bancroft in a great performance), has a memorable night on shore in New York when he saves the life of an attempted suicide, Mae (Betty Compson).  Since she tried to drown herself, he goes to a pawn shop and steals some clothes for her, including a fur coat.  She gets arrested for this later, but he treats her well enough.  They spend time in a rowdy bar.  Fights, alcoholism, women treated like possessions.  Mae is a prostitute, or rather that's implied.  When Bill pressures her into marrying him a minister is summoned.  A misty point of view shot from the minister's eyes shows Mae, indicating he's been one of her customers.  It could be interpreted differently; that she's a lost sheep and he's concerned in that regard, but the look on his face shows yearning.

     In the morning, Bill tiptoes out of Mae's room.  He plans on shipping out as soon as possible.  Mae's friend shoots her own husband, Bill's boss, after she catches him advancing on Mae, whom he desires.  Bill steps in, defending Mae against the cops' accusations.  Mae's friend admits to her crime.  Will Mae and Bill make a go of it?  In the end, yes, but only after she kicks him out and he stokes on another ship for about a half hour before jumping overboard.  Mae's in court for allegedly stealing the clothes.  Bill arrives just in time, East River water soaking his clothes.  He admits to the theft, gets sixty days.  

     "Will you wait for me?" he asks Mae.

     "I expect I'd wait forever," she replies.  

     Her reply doesn't correspond visually with Betty Compson's face in this moment.  She looks rather blank and resigned.  When the intertitle goes away the camera is aimed from behind her at George Bancroft.  I don't know for sure, but I suspect Josef von Sternberg wanted to end his film differently.  Mae is a tragic figure, death surrounds her first action in the film--jumping into the water at dockside.  One of the first things she says to Bill is that she'll try hanging around for a while, adding that "I can always find another hole in the water."

     Surely, if the film is to make non-Hollywood sense, she ends her life with another dive into the drink, or perhaps returns to her self-destructive night life, the very thing that perhaps contributed to her initial suicide attempt.  

     Still, the film remains a beautifully made, gorgeously photographed art work.  Josef von Sternberg's tendency to fill his frames with fascinating details; movements, counter-movements, light and shadow, misty images, fog, the restlessness of seagulls; all these ingredients make up his style seen in numerous examples from his career.  A style over substance argument could be, and has been made about his movies.  I disagree completely with this view, though.  He was a great film artist; he understood emotion told through images.  He had a hard time throughout his career with screenwriters.  Words were of no interest to him in films; the images, rather, spoke the movie.

     "Art," he said, "is the compression of infinite spiritual power into a confined space."  

     The flatness, the disappointment for the viewer in the film's final courtroom scene, curiously lacks that "infinite spiritual power," indicating to me he may have had the tiller taken away from him on this particular film; a punishment inflicted on who knows how many directors in Hollywood during its Golden years, when things were too often dictated, nonsensically, to end happily.

Vic Neptune