“Tourneur is an artist and a man of temperament. He has conjured up the atmosphere of the harbour district with its low dives, of ship’s cabins and afterdecks, in a series of images, the beautifully tinged and shaded chiaroscuro of which is reminiscent of the portraiture of the French masters (photograph: Nikolaus Farkas). But it’s just not acceptable to show nothing more over the whole length of a film than one single raging brawl, without climaxes or turning-points, breaks or tranquil moments. Again and again, yelling drunken extras swaying to and fro demonically. Again and again Marlene Dietrich, though glorious to behold, being pursued through a labyrinth of trapdoors and bulls eyes! And it’s just not acceptable to have Fritz Kortner play a captain, who mistakes the bridge for a director’s chair à la Jessner. Gaston Modot, strange and threatening in the guise of a criminal, and Vladimir Sokoloff as a ship’s cook characterised in a human, simple, and suggestive way, were the only ones with that directness of expression born not of deliberation but of instinct. Otherwise, a film of lost actors”. (Hans Sahl, Ein deutscher Millionen-Film. Das Schiff der verlorenen Menschen. Der Montag Morgen, Berlin, Nr. 38, 23.9.1929, in Gero Gandert (Hg.), Der Film der Weimarer Republik, 1929, 1993)