George Bancroft

A roughneck stoker on a coal-fired ship comes ashore for a single night in New York and falls for a dance-hall girl who is trying to kill herself. Josef von Sternberg's fog-shrouded portrait of the waterfront is one of the most exquisitely photographed films of the silent era, with Harold Rosson's cinematography and Hans Dreier's expressionist sets creating a world of smoke, steam, and shadow. George Bancroft is the brawling stoker and Betty Compson the weary dance-hall girl, and the film follows their brief, doomed romance through a single shore leave. The Docks of New York was selected for the National Film Registry in 1999. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A pre-Code proto-noir directed by Josef von Sternberg, notable for its pioneering use of early sound technology and expressionistic visuals. George Bancroft plays Thunderbolt Jim Lang, a condemned gangster on death row who plots to kill the young man (Richard Arlen) in the next cell for stealing his girlfriend (Fay Wray). Bancroft received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor at the second Academy Awards ceremony in 1930. The screenplay was written by Jules Furthman with dialogue by Herman J. Mankiewicz. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Drama

Underworld is the film that launched the American gangster genre. Josef von Sternberg directed it from a story by Ben Hecht, who would win the first Academy Award for Best Original Story the year the awards began. George Bancroft plays Bull Weed, a criminal kingpin whose jealous devotion to his moll, Feathers, drags him into a war with a rival and the law. Evelyn Brent is the woman caught between the gangster and the alcoholic lawyer he befriends. Von Sternberg's camera work is fluid and expressive, already showing the style he would bring to his films with Marlene Dietrich. The film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Crime · Drama · Silent