The Salvation Hunters

1925 US Josef von Sternberg
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The hapless trio, Children of the Mud—the Boy, the Girl, the Child—defeat the Brute, discover their inner faith, and become Children of the Sun. The beginning, on a barge, "giant claw" of a dredge menacing and symbolic in the background, foreground, ever-present; magical, other-worldly, fifteen minutes of the most-wonderful silent cinema! Then, like flakes of caked mud, these qualities are stripped off, lost, the story moving from barge to city, from city to climax in the country. Overall quality remains, but it is no longer brilliant—simply good. Rich fantasy sequence withstanding, balance tips too far toward reality. Is Tag Gallagher right: is it "hard now to appreciate the bomb-shell that Sternberg's first feature must have been in Hollywood"? I can't say, but it takes a mere pinch of patience to see that Sternberg's $5,000 (about $50,000 today) hour-long debut contains poetry, beauty, moments of the sublime. If you can, experience it.