The
1936 Hollywood extravaganza, San Francisco, is a near-epic that attempts
to place a melodramatic love triangle (or is it four-sided?—it seems to want to
be that) in the context of the catastrophic 1906 earthquake that devastated San
Francisco; thus, making the film a melodrama-disaster movie. Oh, but it has
singing and dancing, too!—the flick spawned the title number (composed by Bronislaw
Kaper and Walter Jurmann, lyrics by Gus Kahn) that became one of the city’s
official songs.
Helmed
by the even-handed W. S. Van Dyke, one of the Golden Age’s most dependable
directors, San Francisco reaches to be too many things. Granted, it is a
motion picture that has its fans, especially a devoted following in its titular
town. It was indeed nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award of its year;
Van Dyke was also up for Best Director, and Spencer Tracy was given the nod for
Best Actor (although his role is decidedly a supporting one). However, the
movie won only a single award—Best Sound Recording.
Clark
Gable and Jeanette MacDonald are the stars in this tale of nightlife folks in
the days leading up to that fateful morning of April 18, 1906. “Blackie†Norton
(Gable) runs a nightclub and gambling hall called the Paradise. Mary Blake
(MacDonald), freshly arrived from Colorado, applies for a singing job at the
club. Mary is a trained classical singer, so the fare served at the Paradise is
not really her style—but she needs the job. She is also naïve and a bit too
vulnerable for the rather sleazy nightlife of the Barbary Coast area.
Nevertheless, Norton hires her. Norton’s friend, Father Tim Mullen (Tracy)
immediately sees that Mary doesn’t belong there. Wealthy Jack Burley (Jack
Holt) runs the Tivoli Opera House. He falls in love with Mary and woos her away
to sing opera—where she belongs. That’s when Norton realizes he’s in love with
Mary and tries to get her back. Conflict ensues. Father Mullen interferes. And
then there’s an earthquake in the final twenty minutes of the picture.
Audiences
in 1936 no doubt flocked to the movie to see the then-spectacular disaster
footage, which is impressive considering when the picture was made.
Unfortunately, it feels as if this set piece is a long time coming. The
melodrama on display in the first 95 minutes can induce eyerolling. A major
problem of the film is that Gable’s character is a heel and a jerk, and he
treats Mary as if she’s his property. Are we supposed to believe that she loves
him? Well, okay, he is Clark Gable, the most popular male star at
the time. MacDonald is competent—she certainly sings like a bird and looks
good—but her character is sadly undeveloped. She also allows herself to be too
easily bounced between the men in her life—first Norton, then Burley, then even
Father Mullen, and back again, and then to one of the others, and so forth.
There
is much to admire, though. Some of the supporting actors are fun to see—Ted
Healey as Norton’s sidekick at the club, Harold Huber as the club’s manager,
Jessie Ralph as Burley’s mother, Edgar Kennedy as the sheriff… and other faces
that will be familiar to fans of 1930s Hollywood. The musical numbers are well
staged, and the “bigness†of the picture is notable—San Francisco feels
as if it’s one of those “cast of thousands†pictures, even though it isn’t.
Warner
Archive’s new Blu-ray is a worthy upgrade to a previous DVD release.
Supplements are also ported over from the earlier edition: a nice documentary
featurette on Clark Gable (narrated by Liam Neeson); two vintage “FitzPatrick
Traveltalks†Shorts on San Francisco; a vintage Harman/Ising cartoon, “Bottlesâ€;
and an alternate 1948 ending that was edited into the film upon re-release. The
1936 version ends with a montage displaying “modern†(1936) San Francisco,
rebuilt after the destruction of the earthquake. The 1948 alternate simply
shows a skyline of ten years later. The original ’36 ending is better edited,
fits better, and is appropriately in the main feature on the disk. The re-issue
theatrical trailer rounds out the package.
San
Francisco is
an example of the kind of big movies Hollywood could make when a studio wished
to do so. While it’s not a particularly great film, it’s good enough to
represent a style and presentation that reflects the time in which it was made.
