Lawyer of San Francisco

San Francisco

Description

Romantic drama combines with humor, starpower combines with lavish spectacle and the walls come tumbling down! This Academy Award?-winning* extravanganza's street-splitting, brick-cascading, fire-raging recreation of the cataclysmic earthquake remains "one of the greatest action sequences in the history of the cinema, rivalling the chariot race in both Ben-Hurs" (Adrian Turner, Time Out Film Guide). Clark Gable plays rakish Barbary Coast kingpin Blackie Norton. Jeanette MacDonald portrays a singer torn by her love for Blackie and her need to succeed among the operagoing elite. Earning the first of nine career Best Actor Oscar? nominations,* Spencer Tracy is a priest who supplements spiritual advice with a mean right hook. He urges Blackie to change. But if love and religion can't reform Blackie, Mother Nature will.

"San Francisco, open your Golden Gate...." If the classic city anthem isn't part of your life already, it will be after a viewing of this 1936 hit, a wonderful blend of cornpone, spectacle, and song. It's set in 1906, the year the earthquake flattened much of Baghdad by the Bay. Like the disaster movies that followed (including In Old Chicago, a Fox cash-in from a couple of years later), San Francisco slowly establishes its characters before unleashing the destruction. Clark Gable is Blackie Norton, a cocky and ruthless Barbary Coast character whose heart is--well, not softened, but at least dented by the arrival of an opera singer (Jeanette MacDonald) looking for a job. He hires her for his rowdy club, while his childhood chum, Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy), disapproves. As they would subsequently demonstrate in Test Pilot and Boom Town, Gable and Tracy have great he-man rapport together (Blackie's rampant maleness is challenged only by the fact that he knows the priest could punch him out). Director W.S. Van Dyke (The Thin Man) keeps everything cracking along, except for those moments when Cultcha rears its head and MacDonald sings an aria. When the quake hits, and the fire follows, the movie uncorks some really quite awesome special effects, including the unforgettable image of a street heaving up and separating under people's feet--much superior to the disaster effects in The Last Days of Pompeii, made just a year earlier. Needless to say, this could only be MGM in its heyday, laying on the big budget, an acceptable level of naughtiness, and a dose of religious turnaround in the end. It worked then; it still does. --Robert Horton

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-06-18
Summary: "A Great Classic with a Few Flaws"

A beautiful songbird, Mary Blake (MacDonald), is hired by Blackie Norton (Gable) to sing for his saloon on the Barbary Coast. He falls in love with her, but he's a shady character and Mary is an upstanding Christian. Mr. Burley, an aristocrat and owner of the nearby opera house, gets Mary to work for him and she becomes a star. She is pulled between the two venues and the two men, but finally realizes that she loves Blackie. In a dazzling finale portraying the San Fran earthquake of 1906, they walk off together with other survivors to "rebuild" the city.

The Pros:
-I love Clarke Gable, and he plays a wonderfully multi-faceted character. He's the scoundrel that you love and want to save. And the ending is satisfying, in terms of the change in his disposition.

-The special effects during the earthquake will wow you - you'll wonder, "How the hell did they pull this off in 1936?" The portrayal of the earthquake is also heartbreaking, and a great tribute to all the lives lost.

-Mrs. Burley (Mr. Burley's mother) is a tough old bird with a Scottish accent, yet she is very likable and does a great job convincing Mary (and the viewer) that she should marry Mr. Burley.

-The ending is very heartwarming, albeit cheesy, but this was Hollywood at its prime.

-The singing and choreography is fantastic; kudos to MacDonald.

The Cons:
-Mary is a predominantly weak character. She "saves" Blackie with her faith, and she stands up for her morals, but ultimately she is tossed around between the two men, agreeing to marry one and then the other, making her seem shallow.

That's the biggest problem. The film is tinged with melodrama at some points, but that's to be expected. I wish this film was recognized as more of a classic!

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-28
Summary: "A dramatic movie"

I have only seen this movie once but the scene that stands out to me is the San Fransisco earthquake and Jeannette McDonald is trapped under falling debris. This scene is done well.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-24
Summary: "Great Show!"

Very entertaining and magical for its time!
Clark Gable is always fun to watch from the olden days of television! Enjoyed the fire sequence! It reminded me of GWTW!!! Movie arrived in great shape and so fast in delivery too! I will treasure this one in my classic movie collection!

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-05-12
Summary: "Cast correction -(DVD, 2006) listing"

Just correctig some information in the listing..... Liam Neeson is listed in the cast of this movie. Not sure how or why he's listed but, he isn't in it, nor is anyone named Neeson. Check IMDB for correct cast listing.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-04-05
Summary: "Let Down"

I yield to no man in my admiration for Jeanette MacDonald, and in fact I remember seeing San Francisco in a movie house packed to the rafters with disaster and Gable fans, and a loud burst of applause at the end (well, it was the Castro, and we give standing ovations to Patty Duke). And so I was looking forward to seeing San Francisco again, and it was with bewilderment as the minutes ticked by and I found myself increasingly bored when not puzzled by what was going on. Anita Loos or whoever it was, gave San Francisco a plot structure that moved, all right, but in shuddering creaks like the Titanic stuck on an iceberg. And what's worse, Gable looks awful, so greasy and slick, while my wonderful Jeanette MacDonald gives off only a few moments of her patented charm, and even her low-key but remarkable sex appeal has been somehow tamped down, way down. Was it, as people say, that she had no offscreen fondness for Clark Gable? Or did she resent being cast in a non-musical? I don't know; she seems to think that she IS in a musical, and gives her many numbers the old college try. Maybe not having anyone to sing duets with (bar the long, long, hour-long sequence in which she triumphs as Marguerite) didn't give her the chance to strike up sparks with anyone, not even a maid this time as in the later CAIRO.

As for Spencer Tracy, yes, he's energetic, but for the life of me the Hays Code restrictions were so severe that it left the screenplay a mess without a cause. What had Blackie Norton done that left Father Mullin so convinced of his utter damnation? (Because we get the speech that he never did wrong to women, never stole, never cheated, etc., so why is Tracy so upset with him?) It might have been better had Blackie been an actual cad. But the fatal miscalculation is thinking that audiences would care about Blackie's so called Reform of the board of supervisors over some issue involving not enough fire trucks or whatever.... The movie might have worked had Rossellini been around to direct it--someone who cared about actual social and civic issues--but as it stands it's just about who can bluster better, Gable, Tracy, or the opera guy who loved Mary Blake body and soul but who just doesn't care about the people. I'm let down. I usually love this kind of old movie.