Three Silent Classics By Josef Von Sternberg (Underworld / Last Command / Docks of New York) (Criterion Collection)Vienna-born, New York–raised Josef von Sternberg (Shanghai Express, Morocco) directed some of the most influential, extraordinarily stylish dramas ever to come out of Hollywood. Though best known for his star-making collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, Sternberg began his movie career during the final years of the silent era, dazzling audiences and critics with his films’ dark visions and innovative cinematography. The titles in this collection, made on the cusp of the sound age, are three of Sternberg’s greatest works, gritty evocations of gangster life (Underworld), the Russian Revolution (The Last Command), and working-class desperation (The Docks of New York) made into shadowy movie spectacle. Criterion is proud to present these long unavailable classics of American cinema, each with two musical scores. UNDERWORLD Sternberg’s riveting breakthrough is widely considered the film that launched the American gangster genre; it earned legendary scribe Ben Hecht a best original story Oscar the first year the awards were given. 1927 • 81 minutes • Black & White • Silent with stereo scores • 1.33:1 aspect ratio THE LAST COMMAND Emil Jannings won the first best actor Academy Award for his performance as an exiled Russian military officer turned Hollywood actor, whose latest part—a czarist general—brings about his emotional downfall. 1928 • 88 minutes • Black & White • Silent with stereo scores • 1.33:1 aspect ratio THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK A roughneck stoker falls hard for a wise and weary dance hall girl in this expressionistic portrait of lower-class waterfront folk, one of the most exquisitely crafted films of its era. 1928 • 75 minutes • Black & White • Silent with stereo scores • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Rating:  List Price: $ 79.95 Price: $ 58.99 Find More Dvd Products[/random] |
(out of 5 reviews)
Review by Jeffrey E. Ford for Three Silent Classics By Josef Von Sternberg (Underworld / Last Command / Docks of New York) (Criterion Collection)
Rating:
Criterion’s announcment that they will be releasing a package of three of Josef Von Sternberg’s silent masterpieces is one of the greatest pieces of news to come out of the home video front in some time. And if Criterion does their usual impeccable job in regard to transfers and supplements, then the results should be satisfactory to everyone. Speaking as one who has lived with Paramount’s old VHS versions of DOCKS OF NEW YORK and THE LAST COMMAND for over twenty years now, it will be very interesting to see the films with music other than the Gaylord Carter organ scores that were attached to those releases; one hopes that the new scores that Criterion has commissioned for this release are at least as good as the ones Carter did (especially in regard to DOCKS). In any case, the films themselves are visually superb, and among the finest examples (along with William Wellman’s still unavailible on DVD WINGS and the equally elusive THE WEDDING MARCH directed by Erich Von Strohiem) of silent film artistry in the late 1920′s. These films are elegant and eloquent without any talk; indeed, any talk in them would have destroyed the beautifully evocative moods that Von Sternberg creates. This set should be a must for anyone who loves film, and I cannot wait to get my copy.
Review by Brad Baker for Three Silent Classics By Josef Von Sternberg (Underworld / Last Command / Docks of New York) (Criterion Collection)
Rating:
On August 24, Criterion releases the brand-new Josef von Sternberg Silent-Classic Collection, a 3-Disc set. Fully restored, two films were available in the past(both in 1987) on VHS tape, and the third, “Underworld”, has likely never been seen by almost anyone, except private collectors, since 1927. Vienna-born, New Jersey- raised Josef von Sternberg directed some of the most influential, stylish dramas to come out of Hollywood. Best known for his collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, von Sternberg began his career during the final years of the silent era. First up is “Underworld”, the movie responsible for starting the gangster-film cycle. At the Academy Awards in May, 1929, the film received an Oscar for writer Ben Hecht, who soon would be at work on “Scarface”. “Underworld” achieved fame overnight, earning success in public screenings at the New York Paramount, and soon an all-night schedule was improvised to accommodate the unexpected crowds. “Underworld” opens with title cards telling of a “great city in dead of night..streets lonely…moon clouded..empty buildings of a forgotten age”. Sudenly an explosion shatters a bank building. Crime leader Bull Weed(George Bancroft) emerges carrying loot. He spots a derelict(Clive Brook) nearby, in an inebriated state. Weed throws him in his car and speeds off. Weed takes a liking to his new friend, known as “Rolls Royce”, who, when sober, becomes his stooge, friend, and driver. We also meet Feathers McCoy(Evelyn Brent), Weeds’gal. A violent gun-battle ends the show; a famous scene that scored with jazz-era audiences. Sternberg’s underworld is a hell of false illusions. Though rich in mis-en-scene, “Underworld” is sadly dated and slow; Bancroft’s learing ganster fails to carry the film. Next up is the real jewel of the bunch. In “The Last Command”, Emil Jannings is passionate and heartbreaking as an exiled Russian military officer. “The Last Command” was based on the true story of Duke Alexander, who arrives penniless in the US after the 1917 Russian Revolution. He supports himself by playing movie bit parts. In Russia, the Duke had mistress Natacha(Evelyn Brent), who once thought of killing the Duke. Natacha is dispatched by the Bolsheviks, and her loss throws the Duke into dispair. Now the Duke is a Hollywood extra, performing for the director(a young William Powell). In a surreal final sequence, the Duke and director share a sense of futility; they recognise the correct positioning of the medal on the general’s costume at the same time. Jennings is powerfully tragic. The late Preson Sturges called this film the only perfect movie he had ever seen. Finally, there is 1928′s “Docks of New York”. Geroge Bancroft plays a two-fisted ship’s stoker. In a famous scene, he rescues Betty Comson from suicide. Bancroft marries her, but sobers up later, and decides to set-sail on the open sea…perhaps forever. The story is secondary to von Sternberg’s careful camerawork and direction. Bancroft’s career would fade with the gangster-film-cycle, and by 1939, he was playing a small part as the sheriff with John Wayne in “Stagecoach”. This Criterion release is a three-DVD set, with new, restored digital transfers, a 1968 TV interview, essays by Geoffrey O’Brien, the film treatment by Hecht, and parts of von Sternberg’s autobiography. Von Sternberg would shoot two more films for Paramount, and then, in 1930, his career would escalate again, with an ironic tragedy about “Naught Lola”. It was called “The Blue Angel”.
Review by calvinnme for Three Silent Classics By Josef Von Sternberg (Underworld / Last Command / Docks of New York) (Criterion Collection)
Rating:
I’ve been waiting for years for Paramount to do something with these titles. I have “Docks of New York” and “The Last Command” on VHS from years ago – I think it was Paramount’s 75th anniversary edition. It’s Underworld that has never been available on any format and that I saw only once on PBS years ago. Yet it too made quite an impression.
The Last Command is a rare chance to see Emil Jannings and is a compelling tale involving the Russian Revolution, winning Jannings the first Academy Award for Best Actor. Docks of New York is an early precode starring Betty Compson, a truly overworked actress during the early talking film period, in a rare surviving silent work of hers. Finally there is Underworld. If you’ve only seen Clive Brooks play rather stuffy aristocratic parts I think you’ll find this a revelation. Here he plays Rolls Royce, a bum turned respectable by a gangster who then goes into competition with the gangster for his girl, played by Evelyn Brent. All three have great photography and – as first class late silent films – make me quite sad that the silent film era had to end. The following is the scoop on the extra features:
Six scores: one by Robert Israel for each film; two by the Alloy Orchestra, for Underworld and The Last Command; and a piano and voice piece by Donald Sosin for The Docks of New York
Two new visual essays: one by UCLA film professor Janet Bergstrom and the other by film scholar Tag Gallagher
1968 Swedish television interview with director Josef von Sternberg, covering his entire career
PLUS: A ninety-six-page booklet featuring essays by film critic Geoffrey O’Brien, film scholar Anton Kaes, and author Luc Sante; the original film treatment for Underworld by Ben Hecht; and an excerpt from Sternberg’s autobiography, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, on Emil Jannings
Review by Michael B. Druxman for Three Silent Classics By Josef Von Sternberg (Underworld / Last Command / Docks of New York) (Criterion Collection)
Rating:
This three-disc set features a trio of restored silent films directed by Josef Von Sternberg. Titles include UNDERWORLD (1927), THE LAST COMMAND (1928) and THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK (1928). The box set also includes a 96-page booklet, filled with photographs and essays dealing with the director’s work.
Josef Von Sternberg is probably best remembered as the director who discovered and “created” Marlene Dietrich. He directed her in THE BLUE ANGEL, MOROCCO and several other films.
Von Sternberg, however, was much more than Dietrich’s collaborator. He was one of the cinema’s most influential directors. His unique visual style and unconventional use of lighting and shadows anticipates the film noir work of Anthony Mann, Edward Dmytryk and other top directors of the genre, as well as Orson Welles.
Sadly, with the exception of the Dietrich movies, most of Von Sternberg’s sound pictures are virtually forgotten. His gift as a director was in creating an all-encompassing atmosphere through his visuals, not in his abilities as a storyteller. Indeed, much of his work in the 1930s and 1940s is dramatically inept.
The three silent films in this collection are, arguably, the director’s finest work, yet two of them suffer from an actor who does not seem to understand the word “subtlety”.
George Bancroft, best known to today’s audiences for his performance as “Curley,” the sheriff, in John Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939), stars in both UNDERWORLD and THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK.
In UNDERWORLD, one of Hollywood’s first ventures into the gangster film, Bancroft plays the boisterous head of a gang of crooks who befriends a down-on-his-luck lawyer (Clive Brook) with an alcohol problem. Unfortunately, Bancroft’s lady (the lovely Evelyn Brent) and the lawyer fall for each other, which motivates Bancroft, facing execution for killing a rival mob boss, to break out of prison and seek revenge.
UNDERWORLD is a fairly involving, fast-paced story that, despite a few awkward moments, still works today. The key problem is that Bancroft’s acting style is so over-the-top, compared to the other actors, that it’s like they’re performing in two different pictures.
His performance is even more obnoxious in THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK, in which Von Sternberg does a magnificent job of recreating the New York waterfront, circa 1900.
This movie is supposed to be a gentle love story about a ship’s stoker (Bancroft) and his relationship with an attractive waif (Betty Compson), who he rescues after she attempts to drown herself.
Compson is absolutely charming, one of the most talented actresses of the silent cinema. But, Bancroft is such a brute, the kind of guy who would rather punch you in the nose than say “Hello,” that one has to wonder why Betty would ever agree to marry him, even if he did save her life.
The best overall movie in this set is THE LAST COMMAND, which won star Emil Jannings the first Best Actor Academy Award. This engrossing story, told primarily in flashback, has Jannings cast as a former Russian general, cousin to the Czar, who was forced to flee his native country at the start of the 1917 revolution, and now (in 1928) works as a movie extra in Hollywood.
Evelyn Brent co-stars as a revolutionist with whom Jannings falls in love and William Powell plays a former revolutionary leader, imprisoned by Jannings in 1917, who becomes a top Hollywood director and hires Emil in order to get some measure of revenge.
Jannings may have been the greatest character actor of his day, but he, according to Von Sternberg (supposedly a major egomaniac himself), was impossible to deal with. When his Hollywood career ended with the coming of sound, Jannings returned to his home country of Germany where he became a minion of Hitler. According to legend, at the end of World War II when Allied troops were patrolling the streets of Berlin, Jannings was seen holding his Oscar statuette and begging the soldiers not to shoot him.
© Michael B. Druxman
Review by Chip Kaufmann for Three Silent Classics By Josef Von Sternberg (Underworld / Last Command / Docks of New York) (Criterion Collection)
Rating:
It has been a long time in coming but at last Josef von Sternberg’s three legendary silent masterpieces are coming to DVD and in a Criterion edition no less. I’m not quite sure how or why Paramount agreed to this but I’m certainly not complaining. As others have pointed out, DOCKS OF NEW YORK and THE LAST COMMAND were available on home VHS some 20 years ago. They were high quality transfers accompanied by newly recorded Gaylord Carter organ scores. UNDERWORLD has never been available in a first rate transfer of any kind so that alone makes this set extra special. In addition, all three films will have 2 new scores to accompany them which will only enhance the viewing experience even more. Too bad the Gaylord Carter scores weren’t included as they were models of their kind. Throw in the Criterion extras like the 96 page booklet and a 1968 interview with von Sternberg himself and you have something no silent movie enthusiast or film buff should be without.
For those of you unfamiliar with these films the stories are as follows. UNDERWORLD, the first of the three, can rightfully be considered the first gangster feature as it chronicles the rise and fall of crime boss Bull Weed and his associates. It also offers silent comedy fans a rare opportunity to see Larry Semon in a fairly serious role which was one of his last film appearances. Film number two, THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK, positively oozes atmosphere as it takes us into BLUE ANGEL territory with its vivid depiction of a lowlife bar full of smoke and fishnets and the poor souls who inhabit it. The best of the three, THE LAST COMMAND, features Emil Jannings’ greatest American performance as a Russian general traumatized by the Russian Revolution and reduced to appearing as an extra in Hollywood movies. William Powell scores as a former revolutionary who is now a movie director. If you don’t want to purchase these then get your Netflix queues ready for they are indispensible.