528-531 Three Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Sloper
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 10:06 pm

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

#176 Post by Sloper » Sat Dec 18, 2021 6:09 am

I definitely lean more towards TWBB’s point of view, though I have even less of a problem with the ending in its current state. Mr S., I really appreciate your negative reading, and sometimes wish we had more scathing take-downs in these Film Club discussions. I’m going to be really annoying and say that I think your antipathy towards this film may be rooted in some of the things I like most about it…

Bill and Mae are remarkably ‘empty’ characters, in more ways than one. Most romances would introduce us to the protagonists, make us like them and make us understand their problems, and then show them getting together, having chemistry, facing obstacles, and overcoming them. This film retains that basic structure, except that we don’t really get to know the characters and they don’t have any ‘chemistry’ in the usual sense. We don’t know enough about these people to make any judgment about whether they are ‘right for each other’ – we don’t even know enough to say that they’re ‘wrong for each other’. Compare this to something like Lonesome, which still sketches its characters very lightly but tells us just enough about them to make their relationship convincing and sympathetic.

The Docks of New York deliberately misses out on almost every opportunity to flesh Mae and Bill out in conventional ways. These are simply two people who have nothing to live for, and they behave accordingly.

Bill lumbers around mindlessly pursuing one low-hanging sensual pleasure after another, not seeming to relish them and not giving much sign of enjoyment beyond a semi-ironic smirk. When he sees Mae drowning he shows no alarm or concern, but slowly takes his jacket off and proceeds to save her as though he were picking a coin up off the street. And we don’t really see Mae pull him out of this state, either – there isn’t the kind of dramatic ‘awakening’ to the possibilities of love that we might expect, and the Bill we see at the end of the film seems very much like the one at the start.

Likewise, Mae isn’t softened or sentimentalised as much as a character like this would normally be. She sits very still or has to be dragged around, and stares blankly into space, her expression conveying only weariness and cynicism. This is not some Lillian Gish wronged innocent begging to be plucked out of the mire, or even a Marlene Dietrich hardened prostitute waiting for the right man to come along and revive her long-dormant capacity for love. Betty Compson plays Mae as genuinely depressed, suicidal, clinging on by a thread, staying alive more out of a sense of apathy than anything else. It’s a great performance, and a strong example of how understated silent-film acting could be.

Defiantly unlikeable characters like these are my favourite kind, and we need more stories about them. We’re not asked to like these people, or to not like them, and we’re not given any reason to root for them, or for their relationship, except that they are totally miserable and they might be able to make each other a shade less miserable – or to put it another way, they both have nothing, and this relationship is ‘something’. As TWBB puts it, this is a chance to ‘do things differently’, under circumstances where pretty much any difference will most likely be an improvement. More films should challenge us to empathise and identify with people when we have almost no incentive to do so. It’s beautiful, and I find it really moving every time, and even though temperamentally I tend to prefer downers, I’m always glad when these two decide to give it a go at the end.

I do like hypothetical fantasies about alternate endings, and TWBB’s is very interesting; but I think even that would be giving the audience too much to go on. It’s better to just leave it as it is, with a single small gesture (I don’t see Bill as having a ‘moral high’ in the courtroom – 60 days in jail is probably less gruelling than the even longer sea voyage he was about to go on) from both characters indicating that they will try to sustain this connection. The alternate ending that Mr S. imagines is one where this relationship is no different from that of the other married couple, with the possibility of sustained connection rejected from the start and ending in destruction: either you stay apart or you inevitably end up killing each other and/or yourselves. This isn’t a world where people have the luxury of seeking out a good match, it’s a fundamentally lonely, alienated world where the only question is whether you can relate meaningfully to other people or whether you just regard them (and yourself) as objects to be pushed, punched, fucked, and discarded. That bleaker, more ‘adult’ ending wouldn’t spell the renunciation of an unhealthy relationship, it would spell the renunciation of any possibility of a relationship.

All this leads into the thing I really love most about this film, which is its evocation of the setting. The title indicates the importance of this, and I think the defining feature of this setting is its liminality, its barely-existent state. The first few intertitles note that that Bill’s job is about to become outdated, that the docks play host to a constantly shifting population of ‘strange cargo and stranger men’ (conflating humans and objects), and the Sandbar itself is about to be eroded by ‘commerce and reform’. The buildings are all crooked, inside and out (notice the window in Mae’s room that seems to be subsiding towards the floor), as if they were washed up here among a load of other wreckage, or as if the sea were dragging them down, or as if no one bothered to build them properly because they would only ever be a temporary home for transient people.

The interiors are drawn with telling details – a rusty bed-frame, uneven globs of plaster and exposed brickwork, assorted detritus strewn around the Sandbar – in a way that the characters pointedly are not. We get to know these people, not through ‘character development’, but through seeing them inhabit these spaces as though they are part of the detritus, at one with these teetering structures just about to tip into oblivion. We first see Mae as a reflection in the fog-shrouded water, then as a series of ripples after she disappears into that water; we don’t see Mae herself. Near the end, when she thinks she is alone again, a dissolve merges her with the water she’s staring into. And in between, she and Bill are constantly at risk of being absorbed and subsumed into the incredibly vivid (and therefore potent) world the film builds around them.

The Sandbar in particular is one of the most beautifully realised settings I’ve ever seen in a film. I happily watched this film twice in quick succession for this thread (once with each score*) and I was left thinking that I could happily have watched the Sandbar sequences a few more times, focusing on a different part of the frame each time. There’s always something interesting going on in the background, reflected in the mirrors, in the decorative souvenirs on the shelves, and in the juxtapositions between these things. The extras here are brilliant: there are enough of them, and they are dynamic enough, to suggest an amorphous, despairing, hedonistic mob; but you can also watch them as individuals and notice that they have their own unique stories going on and their own unique responses to the ‘main’ story.

My favourite part of the film is the wedding sequence, and I think this feeds into my response to Mr S.’s objections. There’s a lovely moment when the drunken woman is conducting the ‘mock’ wedding ceremony, and she does a comic variation on the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ line: everyone in the bar gleefully puts their hands up and cackles, and you can read their lips saying things like ‘I know, I know’. Everyone knows why these two shouldn’t be joined together – there are all the reasons in the world to think this is a stupid idea. It’s quite a funny joke in itself, but the shot of Hymn-Book Harry’s downcast reaction as he watches from the doorway is heart-breaking. He can see that this ‘means something’ to Mae, that it isn’t a joke for her. Again, it’s not that these two are some ideal couple who love each other and need to get married. Bill is still at least half-joking about all this, and even Mae is still wearing a wry smile most of the time. But Mae’s expression (and occasionally Bill’s) also indicate that there is a tiny fraction of this event that represents something serious to someone, and it’s sad to see that being drowned in cynical laughter. This illustrates how the film achieves an emotional impact and makes us invest in the characters and story, through the context that surrounds those things. We understand why Harry turns around and comes back to complete the ceremony, and why for a few seconds the cynical crowd dries up and tries having an earnest emotional reaction to something.

I like dustybooks’ reading of the final shot:
dustybooks wrote:I’m not entirely sure this final encounter is even particularly optimistic, with a palpable air of uncertainty to the beautiful closing pull away from her standing frozen in the courtroom, as she gets swallowed by other people and other cases. There’s no comparison to the silliness of The Wind’s ending, which has never stopped me from considering that a great film. And everything before that moment is so flawlessly haunting it can scarcely negate the picture’s overarching tone of beguiling sorrow.
It’s nice that the judge isn’t moved or impressed by Bill’s taking the rap for Mae; ignoring this gesture, he simply says ‘60 days will slow you down – next case!’, referring back to an earlier part of their exchange, when Bill talked about being in a hurry. The final camera movement sends Mae back into the crowd of extras, not looking especially happy or hopeful (it would have been easy to show her face here, smiling bravely or something), and again the film is challenging us to remember that this nobody, who isn’t asking for our attention or sympathy, is nonetheless important.

* Speaking of the scores, I hadn’t listened to the Donald Sosin one before, as I tend not to like his music (with a few exceptions like Terje Vigen). But I have to say this one wasn’t bad. My heart sank at the beginning when I heard a specially-composed song start up…but I didn’t hate it. ‘My Lucky Day’ is arguably appropriate for this day-in-the-life film, and it’s used intelligently and not too often. That said, perhaps more arguably, it’s not appropriate to the film, as it’s a little too sweet and seems to over-sell how lucky Mae is to have found someone like Bill. It is used in a melancholy, ironic way at times, but I think it needs to be just a little more melancholy and ironic.

Anyway, I still prefer Robert Israel’s score. He’s a very safe pair of hands for this kind of thing, and his take on pianola music is more grating and relentless than Sosin’s, so it gets across the purgatorial atmosphere of the Sandbar more effectively.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

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

#177 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Dec 18, 2021 1:03 pm

Sloper -- you wrote what I wish I could have written -- and you did it so much better than I could have done. The think that amazed me most about this film was its "tangibility" -- the ugly grittiness felt so real -- and yet had unexpected (and unlikely) beauty. Also, the scope for sentimentality (which one might expect to find in a film of this sort from this time) seemed (to me) mostly very much resisted. I found myself invested in the characters even as they seemed to push one away.

Addendum -- Found my copy of Docks (no small task) especially due to Christmas season rearrangement of all sorts of things. So maybe I can re-watch this -- after Christmas.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

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

#178 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Dec 26, 2021 11:06 pm

So, I re-watched this tonight.

The first thing I can say is that this is one film I really can't tear my eyes from. I could probably "watch" this frame-by-frame. Visually speaking, I love every single frame. And maybe I'm just a sentimental sap, but I love every moment of the story too.

As to the wedding scene, it seems to me that Hymn Book Harry's gravity (and the attitude of our couple) actually causes the rowdy crowd to settle down. Despite the decidedly non-churchy setting, the watchers begin to take this ceremony seriously -- and their celebration after it concludes seems to me to be good-natured (and genuinely well-wishing) -- the earlier aura of this just being a "joke" seems to have vanished for good.

I love many other silent films, but no Hollywood one engages me more fully than this one (even the Murnau ones I like best). Despite the sentimentality, this looks so intensely "real" to me. I'm afraid, in the end, Mr Sausage, despite my re-watching, I am not really any closer to being able to logically explain why I am so drawn to this. So, just mark it down to irrational love (which I guess is what the film is sort of about).

Post Reply