The Salvation Hunters (1925). Josef von Sternberg

Foreword

There are important fragments of life that have been avoided by the motion picture because thought is concerned and not the body.

A thought can create and destroy nations – and it is all the more powerful because it is born of suffering, lives in silence, and dies when it has done its work.

Our aim has been to photograph a thought – a thought that guides humans who crawl close to the earth – whose lives are simple – who begin nowhere and end nowhere.

A harbor – like all the others: mud, water, and sometimes the sun.

For every load of mud the claw dislodged, the earth laughed and pushed in another.

A city – like all others; stone, smoke, and sometimes the sun.

Man's worst enemy is man. A city is full of enemies.

Hunger will whisper things into their ears that I might find troublesome to say.