Among the great directors of the silent screen were some who are known today as the pictorialist directors: those who approached their work with an artist’s eye and whose films are like great moving paintings. In America, Maurice Tourneur and Rex Ingram were two distinguished practitioners of this specialized branch of moviemaking. A new name was added to the fraternity in the late 1920s: Josef von Sternberg. Austrian by birth, Sternberg had lived in the United States for much of his life and had worked his way up in the film business, learning the mechanics of camera, lighting, and editing from the ground up. By the time he was assigned to replace Arthur Rosson as the director of Underworld in 1927, he was thoroughly grounded in all aspects of moviemaking. In particular, he had become a self-taught authority on cinematic lighting and composition, and direction of Underworld offered him an opportunity to demonstrate his mastery of the form in a major studio production.

The resulting film was an enormous box-office hit and became an instant classic, and launched Sternberg on what would be a stellar directorial career. In the process he adopted an air of Continental arrogance (complete with the conspicuous addition of “von” to his name), and proceeded to alienate many of his co-workers throughout the balance of his career. But the films speak for themselves. Today Sternberg is remembered largely on the basis of his sound pictures starring Marlene Dietrich, but his Paramount silents of 1927–28 arguably represent the peak of his output, combining his visual virtuosity with strong scripts and acting performances.

Underworld occupies a curious place in the history of the gangster film. Movies depicting gang crime had been common in Hollywood for years, but the face of organized crime itself had transformed radically by the late 1920s. No longer ragtag little groups of small-time hoodlums, urban gangs had been made wealthy by Prohibition and were now large, efficiently run organizations with corrupt ties to government and law enforcement. Underworld stars George Bancroft as the leader of one of these gangs, a well-dressed and well-connected member of criminal society—but the action of the film has nothing to do with the illegal liquor trade. Bancroft’s dishonest activities, as seen onscreen, are confined to relatively minor offenses like bank robberies, and when he acts, he acts alone.

Like the other two films on our program this weekend, Underworld was honored at the first Academy Awards ceremony. The award went not to Sternberg, nor to cameraman Bert Glennon, but to Ben Hecht for his original story. Hecht was a former newspaperman with a colorful record of life experience, allegedly including gangland connections of his own; some of the characters in Underworld are said to be based on real-life miscreants of his acquaintance. His award for the story carried a touch of irony, for Hecht was reportedly unhappy with the liberties Sternberg had taken with his plot. Nevertheless, the film’s success became Hecht’s own, and he went on to become one of Hollywood’s top writers for decades afterward.

As we see it in its finished form, Underworld is distinctly Sternberg’s creation. Bancroft, as the gang leader, is a man well acquainted with violence and crime, but good-hearted and essentially sympathetic. His moll is the seductive Evelyn Brent, and both their lives are transformed by an encounter with Clive Brook, formerly a man of innate taste and breeding, now fallen on hard times and alcoholism. Their story plays out against a dark, atmospheric setting, a proto-film noir cityscape seen through a painter’s eye.

The box-office success of Underworld became a corresponding success, not only for Sternberg and Hecht, but for almost everyone involved. The three principal cast members were all well established in the movies already, and all would continue their acting careers well into the sound era. In addition, the topical excitement of Underworld would breathe new life into the gangster-film genre at large. A flurry of new crime films, some directed by Sternberg, would appear on the heels of this one. With the coming of sound, Warner Bros., the blue-collar, street-level studio, would step in with Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and other gangster classics. But no one would ever quite duplicate the shadowy visual magic of this original 1927 masterwork.

Underworld

Paramount, 1927. Director: Josef von Sternberg. Scenario: Robert N. Lee, adapted by Charles Furthman from a story by Ben Hecht. Camera: Bert Glennon. Cast: George Bancroft, Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent, Larry Semon, Fred Kohler, Helen Lynch, Jerry Mandy, Karl Morse.