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Josef von Sternberg, Paramount, 1928. George Bancroft is a stoker on a night ashore who pulls Betty Compson out of the water and, before morning, has married her in a waterfront saloon. Olga Baclanova is the wife already attached to his shipmate. Harold Rosson photographed fog, sweat, and the back room. Seventy-six minutes. Sternberg treats the plot as an excuse for faces in smoke. Compson’s attempted suicide is the opening, not the finish. A working-night picture: nobody has the next week planned. The docks close in as daylight.
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One night, a stoker, a woman pulled out of the harbor, a wedding in a saloon. Sternberg shoots fog and sweat and faces in smoke and treats the plot as a rumor. Compson's face at the wedding is the film. Nobody plans the next week. That is the tenderness.
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