San Francisco (1936)

"A very entertaining Best Picture Oscar nominee...  Classic Film Guide
"Top-grade entertainment with extremely lavish production.  Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide

Editor's Note SAN FRANCISCO was one of the most successful picture of the 1930s, and the sources of its popularity are readily apparent to this day. Both Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy are excellent, with Gable playing Blackie Norton, a dashing, brawling, gambler with a big heart, and Tracy playing Nob Hill snob Jack Talbot, who vies with Blackie for the attentions of beauty Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald). MacDonald's voice is as good as gold as she sings the title song, arias, popular music, and religious tunes. MGM built genuine reproductions of preearthquake San Francisco for the sets, including landmarks that were destroyed in the 1906 natural disaster. The special effects are accomplished with an aplomb equal to anything produced previous to the digital era, re-creating the quake with alarming and frightening realism. And, unlike many subsequent disaster films, SAN FRANCISCO's plot is sufficiently engaging to make the film worthwhile even without the climactic catastrophe. With it, W.S. Van Dyke's SAN FRANCISCO becomes a fabulous melodrama that should not be missed.

	Clark Gable
	Jack Holt
	Jeanette MacDonald
	Spencer Tracy
	Anita Loos - Screenplay
	Bernard H. Hyman - Producer
	John Emerson - Producer
	Nacio Herb Brown - Original Music By
	Oliver T. Marsh - Cinematographer
	Robert E. Hopkins - Story By
	Tom Held - Editor
	W.S. Van Dyke - Director

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 serves as the background for this passionate romance between an opera singer and a Barbary Coast saloon owner. Academy Award Nominations: 6, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor--Spencer Tracy, Best Original Story. Academy Awards: Best Sound Recording. Crazy for Cinema 7 of 10
A strange mix of heavenly devotion and earthly disaster, this classic pairs the ever-charming Clark Gable with a woman way to good for him, which sort of ruins the fun...I find it hard to fathom how Tracy could have finagled a Best Actor Oscar nod, when he's in barely a third of the film and Gable, who's the star, is completely overlooked. Tracy's presence is the moral compass of the story, but that still doesn't make his performance all that memorable. Ah, the Academy voters. Their choices never cease to amaze. Of course, the real reason anyone still watches this film today would have to be to see the city of San Francisco disintegrate into a pile of rubble.

Crazy for Cinema 7 of 10
A strange mix of heavenly devotion and earthly disaster, this classic pairs the ever-charming Clark Gable with a woman way to good for him, which sort of ruins the fun...I find it hard to fathom how Tracy could have finagled a Best Actor Oscar nod, when he's in barely a third of the film and Gable, who's the star, is completely overlooked. Tracy's presence is the moral compass of the story, but that still doesn't make his performance all that memorable. Ah, the Academy voters. Their choices never cease to amaze. Of course, the real reason anyone still watches this film today would have to be to see the city of San Francisco disintegrate into a pile of rubble. -