In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.We have to thank Criterion and everyone involved for this one. I have been watching so many 1920s films lately and see them in such shambles, both the picture and sound atrocious. But "The Docks" looks crisp and clean, and you can clearly read signs in the background.I was a bit surprised that a tattoo was visible. Not just because tattoos were likely rare in those days, but because it depicted full female nudity. Most be a pre-code thing, because even as a drawing I suspect a censor would have had an issue with that.This would make a great double feature with "On the Waterfront", the other big film about dock workers. The focus may be different, but they both capture a certain world that we never see anywhere else.

Josef von Sternberg's visually romantic melodrama heralded the last gasp of classic silent film expression before the arrival of sound technology set the art of movie-making back 30 years. Moving from poetic realism to dramatic fantasy, the fairy tale plot follows a cruel, amoral ship's stoker who rescues a waterfront moll from attempting suicide. In a local tavern, after one drink and one fight too many, he casually decides to marry the girl, going through the motions in a farcical bar room wedding with no intention of honoring his vows. The scenario, characters, and themes of redemption are all well grounded in the particular moral and social climate of the late 1920s, but technically the film is equal to anything made since. Had it been produced just months later, it might have been little more than another novelty item from the primitive early sound era, instead of the artistic triumph it remains today.

What a treat this tough, realistic movie is. George Bancroft, Betty Compson, and Olga Baclanova are all great is this cynical yet tender story of the waterfront.Director Josef von Sternberg fills a simple tale with pathos and great atmosphere. Tough stoker Bancroft rescues a girl (Compson) from a suicide attempt and "marries" her for a night of fun. But he gets involved in a web of murder, thievery, and drunkenness.When Norma Desmond said "we had faces then" in Sunset Boulevard (and yes I know it was Gloria Swanson), Betty Compson was at the top of the list. With her big eyes and crooked mouth, Compson was expert at expressing emotion with a twist of the mouth, a flick of the eyelashes. She is wonderful here as Mae, the waterfront gal. Bancroft is also terrific as the big lug who falls hard for Mae. And Baclanova, best remembered for "Freaks" is a dynamo as the wronged wife.Great scenes of water and fog and birds serve as a backdrop to the drama that enfolds.Bancroft and Compson won Oscar nominations in the early days of the award and are pretty much forgotten now, but they serve up sparks here in this terrific film. A must see!

Of course, no waterfront in the world was ever as deliciously seedy as set designer Hans Dreier's in this amazingly atmospheric and evocative masterpiece of late silent cinema. The story is rather tawdry, cheapish even, but plots are very rarely the point of a movie anyway, and Josef von Sternberg has made the perfect film out of next to nothing.'The Docks of New York' is about a rough and ready stoker, Bill (George Bancroft), on leave for the night. He goes to the Sandbar and gets into a brawl with Hymn-Book Harry (the ever sleazy Gustav von Seyffertitz), and on the way back saves a young girl, Mae the tough kookie (Betty Compson) from drowning herself. Slowly they sorta kinda fall in love and he marries her on the spur of the moment, but what will they do the next morning when Bill is supposed to sail off again? The most astonishing thing about 'The Docks of New York' is its subtlety. We have no heroes or simplified villains here, just people who have had a hard time all their lives and are reluctant to be redeemed. The concept of love in this sneering, loud-mouthed environment is completely alien. "I hope you have better luck than me", says Olga Baclanova's character to Mae on her way to the slammer, "but I doubt it". It is Baclanova who says on the subject of decency that she was decent "before I got married".It goes without saying that the film is acted as naturalistically as anything we see today, that Compson & Bancroft absolutely shine as the unlikely lovers, grittily played and with no sentimentality. The lighting is superb, photography stupendous, direction acute, and the edition you are most likely to see looks fabulous.