San Francisco
They were born to fall in love!
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.
Member Reviews
Tall Dark & Handsome - Ilania
Not the best I have ever seen and Clark Gable however, his performance is quite impressive and his charm does work here.
Yes the film is old, the songs are a bit corny. On the other hand, the Opera arias are pleasant to hear.
The part we enjoyed the most is the added documentary about Clark Gable. It was worth it!Clark Gable may be a sucker, but God sure isn't - CaptainDave
The true cause of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is revealed in this romantic blockbuster. Jeanette MacDonald as Mary is the girl with a heart of gold and a soul purer than the driven snows. Clark Gable as Blackie is the guy with a heart of gold and a soul, well, just as driven but kinda less pure. Spencer Tracy, as Father Mullin, pops up whenever needed as Blackie's absent conscience.
There's loopy fun in this cornball story that can never take its piety seriously enough. Yet writer Anita Loos had to have had her tongue firmly lodged in her cheek as she banged this one out.
Mary and Blackie are crazy for each other and made for each other, but Blackie's just gotta get religion first. Mary finds herself bouncing helplessly between Heaven (the opera and upper class respectability) and Heck (the music hall and the adoration of the masses). The opera scenes of Mary playing Marguerite in Faust go on way past making their symbolic point. But then, from the opening titles going up in flames, to the earthquake and its aftermath, there's nothing subtle about this movie.
God clearly gets so fed up with these two crazy kids who just can't get together that He decides to destroy San Francisco in order to make Blackie see the light, and He doesn't turn off the brimstone and fire until they're back in each other's arms for good.
The special effects are impressive for their time, John Hoffman's editing montages show he clearly learned a few lessons from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, and whatever wasn't spent on the earthquake was clearly spent on Jeanette MacDonald's elaborate costumes. Yet, even after hearing it sung for the umpty-umpth time, the song "San Francisco" still put a lump in my throat and moistened my eye.
Watch closely and you can see foreshadowings of both Gone with the Wind and The Grapes of Wrath.Not Much of a Movie, But One Hell of an Ending - FilmJunkie
For all the faults in the plot and characters of this film, in the end it is a massive undertaking of an epic that takes chances and introduces new ideas of special effects into mainstream Hollywood.
To be honest, the first hour and forty minutes or so is pretty dull. It is the story of Blackie (Clark Gable) a bar owner and community leader who discovers a young new singer in Mary (Jeanette Macdonald) and eventually falls in love with her. However she is courted by another man and he is pressured by his best friend, Father Mullin (Spencer Tracy), to leave her be. For the majority of the film, Macdonald grates on your nerves and her singing rings in your eyes, not in a good way. Gable has that same old charm, but you never really get why he would like such a dull and prissy young woman. The best character in the film is Tracy's, he is a complex man who grew up on the rough streets but took an entirely different path than Blackie yet still understands both sides of life. Tracy was nominated for an Oscar for this role and you can easily see why, he commands the screen.
The last fifteen minutes or so of this film are remarkable. The earthquake of 1906 destroys the city and leaves our characters in disarray. The scenes capturing the earthquake are entirely believable and the special effects are eerily real (with the exception of one shot of Gable walking away from a large fire which was obviously filmed in front of a large projected image). The sound effects are groundbreaking and these final moments will shake you to the core.
All in all, a film with one hell of an ending and that's about it.
Member Reviews
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Tall Dark & Handsome - Ilania
Not the best I have ever seen and Clark Gable however, his performance is quite impressive and his charm does work here.
Yes the film is old, the songs are a bit corny. On the other hand, the Opera arias are pleasant to hear.
The part we enjoyed ...Clark Gable may be a sucker, but God sure isn't - CaptainDave
The true cause of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is revealed in this romantic blockbuster. Jeanette MacDonald as Mary is the girl with a heart of gold and a soul purer than the driven snows. Clark Gable as Blackie is the guy with a heart of gold and ...Not Much of a Movie, But One Hell of an Ending - FilmJunkie
For all the faults in the plot and characters of this film, in the end it is a massive undertaking of an epic that takes chances and introduces new ideas of special effects into mainstream Hollywood.
To be honest, the first hour and forty minutes or ...