The docks of new york is one of the finest studies of black and white – photography in the history of the cinema and one of the most poignant love stories. Betty Compson is a down-and-out woman saved from a water- front suicide by the reluctant stoker George Bancroft. Nowhere, not even in the best Dietrich films, is Sternberg in better command of dramatic tempo, alternating action with nearly motionless tableaus cut through with conflicting emotions. The ending is magical to the point of mythology, held to earth only by the poetic vernacular of ordinary people. Jean George Auriol, 1929: “not for an instant in this story are the rules of established morality taken into account: those who inhabit it are commanded only by the heart, pride and a sense of personal dignity.”