SAN FRANCISCO: Blu-ray (MGM, 1936) Warner Archive
MGM publicity of its day declared W.S. Van Dyke’s San
Francisco (1936) the picture Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald, teamed for
the first – and only – time, were ‘born to fall in love’. I have
often wondered about that - Gable’s rugged manliness pitted against the
studio’s ensconced ‘iron butterfly’. MacDonald is just a little too refined to
give off the essential smoldering sparks of sensuality to match or even triumph
over her charismatic co-star's earthy animal magnetism. It’s odd too, because
MacDonald began her movie career playing saucy little dames, usually opposite
Maurice Chevalier. However, as she matured, so did her tastes, and her outward
expectations as to what she thought a lady ought to be. And so, the Jeanette
MacDonald better known to film audiences for her antiseptic outings opposite
Nelson Eddy was born, touted, and celebrated, much to the sacrifice of that titillating
and tart little minx she could play when turning up the heat. Gable here is the
antithesis of MacDonald’s idea of a leading man. And it’s all to the good as
his notorious nightclub owner, Blackie Norton exudes precisely the gruff and
grinding sex appeal to hose down MacDonald’s esoteric hints into this woman’s
heart. San Francisco is a
resplendently superfluous bit of nonsense, masterfully sold as the epitome of
chic good taste. Anita Loos’ screenplay moves like gangbusters through a
fanciful yarn to inveigle Gable’s rough n’ tumble saloon keeper with regal
chanteuse, Mary Blake (MacDonald), who dreams of becoming a great opera star.
He recognizes her class, but only insofar as it will lend an air of highbrow respectability
to his saloon. He saves her from starvation, only to be repaid with a
conflicted romance repeatedly stalled by Mary’s morality and ambitions to rise
above his station in life.
Above all else, San Francisco is a celebration
of that lusty bygone mecca in pre-modern infamy where anything could be bought
or sold - the hypothetical 'sin capital' leveled to the ground by the
devastating earthquake of 1906. Anita Loos’ screenplay incorporates the quake
as the divining moment in Blackie and Mary’s stalemated relationship, the
feuding lovers reconciled by the jolting consciousness, how close each almost
came to losing the other via their stagnated pride. Mary and Blackie’s
resolution gets smoothed over by a third cog in this spinning wheel - Spencer
Tracy’s Catholic priest, Father Mullin. In years yet to follow, Tracy would be
called upon again and again to play benevolent clergy, despising every moment
of it. But in San Francisco, he
is a sublime deus ex machina for these bitterly star-crossed lovers, so
obviously right for one another if only she would let her tiara slip just a
little and he could descend from his ego-driven soapbox to admit man does not
live by ‘bread’ (or even strong drink) alone. San Francisco is not your
typical Gable movie – if there is such a thing. For starters, Gable cries –
real tears. His character also suffers a conversion, something Gable’s he-men
until this time usually never did. As the
undisputed king of MGM - and Hollywood, for that matter – Gable’s public
persona was built upon a carefully concocted mythology; that real/reel men don’t
need anybody to survive. Gable’s tough guys usually survived on their own. If
the women in their lives wanted to tag along, that was just fine, so long as
they never were in the way of the man’s goals. But Mary, in San Francisco is
the exception to this rule. She forces Blackie to choose between the life he
has known – and seems unwilling to surrender – and the one she could provide
for him, but on her terms.
At the helm is director, W.S. Van Dyke, whose
guerrilla-style film-making – one-take, and, bringing his movies in on time and
well under budget - was much in demand at MGM – particularly on L.B. Mayer’s
watch after the Thalberg era ended in 1936. Thalberg truly believed in Metro’s
motto – ars gratia artis (or ‘art for art’s sake). For Thalberg, it mattered
not how much a picture cost, or how long it took to get just right, so long as
every last penny showed up on the screen. The profits would follow his
attention to ‘high quality’. And, indeed, for a time, Thalberg’s methodology was
as sound as a bell. Mayer, however, preferred to keep tighter reins. A movie
could still be ‘good’ without straining the coffers to make back its initial
investment, and then some. Ultimately, San Francisco emerged as a clash
between these two mindsets, begun under Thalberg’s auspices before his untimely
death and thereafter begrudgingly afforded every luxury the studio had at its
disposal by Mayer to see it through to completion. Mayer could afford to be
philanthropic where Gable was concerned. His numero uno male star had an
unimpeachable track record for bringing in big box office. So, if the picture came
in at a bit of a premium, Mayer was confident it would also come across as a
prestige effort, sure to advance and elevate the stature of his kingdom, while
significantly contributing to the fattening of its coffers.
And, as before, Gable’s raw intensity as a 'guy's guy'
never fails to impress herein. He remains an extraordinary figure from that
golden age of Hollywood, unique in his uninhibited robustness and raw physicality,
the sheer breadth of his machismo (ostensibly, he never took his stature as a
He-man seriously, thus making it even more deliciously appealing), as well as
his sadly underrated acting chops to carry off this uber ‘superman’ persona,
merely par for the course and an extension of his own authentic self. In
reality, Mr. Gable was a far more congenial and sociable fellow, relatively shy
and much more interested in chumming with the boys than playing the field with
the ladies. While on screen he always managed to convey something of the
untamed and unattainable - a buck every woman wanted to bag. But in private,
Gable proved the antithesis of this godlike ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ tease. He
married young, but to a much older woman who helped mold and shape his early
career. On the sly, he sired a child with actress, Loretta Young before
beginning a closeted affair with madcap comedian, Carole Lombard, who would
eventually become the second Mrs. Gable during the shooting of Gone with The
Wind (1939). And although it is rumored, he also had affairs with Joan Crawford
and Lana Turner, the real strength in Gable’s nature was to be found by how
much and how well both male and female colleagues thought of him as a person
rather than that personality the rest of the world was merely permitted to
worship from afar. In hindsight, one recalls, as example, Gable’s grave concern
for frequent co-star, Jean Harlow on the set of their last movie together, Saratoga
(1937) – her valiant struggle to complete the picture, even as she was already
dying of uremic poisoning; Gable, informing the movie’s director of Harlow’s
mysterious ailing, and gingerly to coax her through one final scene she
insisted on completing for the day, played together, in which Gable’s
admiration for Harlow – the woman – is transparent in the tenderness he
illustrates towards the character she is portraying opposite him.
In retrospect, San Francisco does not appear at
all the kind of picture Jeanette MacDonald would have preferred to add to her
list of achievements. MacDonald, so
nicknamed ‘the iron butterfly’ because of her impenetrable resolve to do things
‘her way’ (almost as readily to lead her into temperamental conflicts with
Mayer), had nevertheless reigned supreme in Mayer’s mid-decade resurrection of
the screen operetta, having already come from a tenure as Paramount’s exotic
bird of paradise, cast mostly in director, Ernest Lubitsch’s cheeky
European-themed musical mis-adventures. Metro attempted to maintain this
inspiration in Euro-sophistication, casting MacDonald opposite Maurice
Chevalier in The Merry Widow (1933). But by mid-decade, Mayer had tapped
MacDonald’s potential as half of a formidable operatic team; the other,
belonging to the studio’s resident male baritone, Nelson Eddy (unflatteringly
nicknamed, ‘the singing capon’ because he generally lacked sex appeal).
Indeed, without MacDonald, Eddy is a queerly emasculated figure on the screen.
Yet, with her, he acquires an unusual and highly appealing sense of place – if
not in the same league as Gable – then certainly capable of the more manly
social graces required of his leading men.
The bulwark between Gable’s earthy magnetism and
MacDonald’s ‘to the manor born’ gentility is Spencer Tracy’s Father Mullin. In
life, Tracy’s demeanor – particularly in the thirties – could hardly be
considered saintly. A conflicted, oft’ self-pitying and tortured artist, he
drank to excess, and chose an enduring love affair with Katherine Hepburn over
marital fidelity (as a devout Catholic, Tracy never divorced his wife).
Nevertheless, ‘on screen’ Tracy remained the soul of rectitude. I suppose this
is why they call it acting. And Tracy, for all his humanly flaws, remains a
Hollywood untouchable - one of the finest actors ever to appear in American
movies. His initial screen test had not ingratiated him to Mayer who promptly
told Thalberg, “We don’t need another galoot. We already got Wallace Beery!”
Indeed, Tracy’s foray into movies illustrates the awkwardness Mayer
initially had in discovering the actor’s niche. But Tracy’s placement in the
cinema firmament was to be as unique as Gable’s, perhaps even more so, as he
lacked the physical appeal of a leading man and yet still managed to become one
almost by default, owing to his on-screen chemistry with Hepburn in a series of
popular ‘man vs. woman’ dramadies produced between 1940-1960. In between
these lighter moments, Tracy also proved he could handle intense drama and stand
alone as ‘the star’ of almost any genre. In San Francisco, Tracy is a
figure of unruffled fortitude and compassion – a buffer for the romantic
sparing between the obdurate Blackie and self-sacrificing Mary. She eventually
forsakes her aspirations for high culture to perform the gregarious title song
at Blackie’s saloon, bringing down the house – literally – with a little help
from Mother Nature.
Plot wise: San Francisco opens on New Year’s
Eve, circa 1906. Loos’ screenplay concerns starving operatic singer, Mary Blake,
who, in a moment of desperation, auditions for scamp nightclub owner, Blackie
Norton. Although Blackie embarrasses Mary by asking to see her legs, he quietly
softens when she acquiesces in order to land the job. Blackie hires Mary after
she passes out at his feet…literally, if only from hunger. However, when
socialites, Jack Burley (Jack Holt) and Maestro Baldini (William Ricciardi)
hear Mary sing, they offer her a contract at the local opera house. Alas, Mary
is bitterly forced to decline. Her contract with Blackie stipulates an
exclusive ‘two year’ run. Burley offers to buy up the contract. Blackie can
name his price. But Blackie desires to turn Mary into a ‘dolly’ – chiefly
against her will, and moreover, because he is in love with her. Mary goes along
with Blackie’s ideas because she has already fallen for him. But Father Mullin
recognizes a brewing toxicity in their relationship. He suggests Blackie loosen
the yoke on their professional arrangement so Mary can pursue her dreams of
becoming an opera star. At first, Blackie resists. But when the strain of their
relationship overwhelms Mary, Blackie allows her a brief respite from his
ironclad contract.
Mary sings at Father Mullin’s mission church and
later, under Burley’s guidance, she makes her operatic debut. In the balconies,
Blackie quietly observes as Mary becomes an overnight sensation before his very
eyes. Two things now become immediately apparent to Blackie: first, Mary has
left his tutelage behind. She has outgrown him and can manage a career better
than anything he could offer her. Second: Mary must make a decision where her
future will reside – as Blackie’s romantic life partner, abiding by his rules,
and held by rights under a slavish contract made to his saloon, or with Jack
Burley – a man she does not love, but is willing to pursue in order to advance
her legitimate career. When Blackie reminds Mary, he has not terminated her
contract, merely suspended its terms temporarily, she storms off. A short while
later Mary elects to return to Blackie’s saloon. After all, had he not
‘discovered’ her, there would have been no Jack Burley – not even the chance to
succeed as she has since. Blackie is proud and boastful. He wants no part of
her charity.
But Mary takes to the stage in a bawdy showgirl’s
costume to belt out ‘San Francisco’ –
Bronislau Kaper, Walter Jurmann and Gus Kahn’s rambunctious anthem to
the city by the bay. The packed audience, including Burley, is stirred to
hysteria over Mary’s rousing rendition. But only seconds later, the earth
beneath the city begins to tremble uncontrollably. In the resultant chaos, the
patrons panic and are trampled underfoot as an epic quake literally rips apart
the city, leveling almost everything to a fiery rubble. Douglas Shearer
actually won an Oscar for Best Sound Editing, largely for this sequence.
Indeed, the deep bass rumble and writhing of the quake is rumored to have
terrified some theater patrons when the picture premiered in San
Francisco. But it is James Basevi, Russell A. Cully and A. Arnold Gillespie’s
special effects that remain a wonderment to behold, holding up even under
today’s scrutiny as an ingenious amalgam of miniatures, full-size sets, models
and rear projection. Oliver T. Marsh’s gorgeous B&W cinematography and Tom
Held’s superb editing conspire here to produce six minutes of exhilarating and
epic disaster.
Immediately following this cataclysm, surviving
citizens begin their rescue and recovery efforts. To prevent the collapse of
more buildings and stop a three-alarm blaze from consuming the rest of the
city, the fire department is ordered to dynamite all existing structures whose
foundations have been irrevocably damaged. This includes the Knob Hill fortress
of Mrs. Burley, who watches helplessly as the family home her father built is
leveled to the ground. Blackie finds Jack Burley’s remains buried beneath a
pile of bricks, still clutching a feather from Mary’s gown. Mercifully, Mary is
not among the dead. Blackie begs Father Mullin to help him in his search. But
only after Mullin realizes the disaster has humbled Blackie before God, does he
lead him to the outskirts of the city where Mary is administering to the
wounded and dying. Blackie gets on his knees and gives thanks for Mary’s
survival, vowing to be a different man. Witnessing Blackie’s conversion, Mary
returns to his side, a reprise of San Francisco yielding to a dissolve
from its fire-ridden decay to the contemporary metropolis it had become by
1936.
The last act of San Francisco is a slightly
mangled religious experience. As in the days when America’s film industry was
collectively managed by self-professed pious individuals, showmen and moguls
who fervently believed in God, country and the ten commandments…even the ones
they never obeyed… the finale to San Francisco relinquishes its zest for
crass commercialism to the nation’s Judeo-Christian allegiances promised to that
higher authority. Partly to mask the dominantly Jewish-held control of the
entertainment industry, though chiefly to appease and prevent government
intervention via censorship of their cloistered kingdoms, the moguls helped to
create a vision of America indivisibly wed to Roman Catholicism. This is
embodied by Spencer Tracy’s benevolent patriarch of the church. The film’s
first and second acts are structured around exposing the moral depravities of a
city succumbing to its own hedonism (highly sanitized and glamorized under
Cedric Gibbons’ superb art direction). The Barbary Coast, as depicted here,
exudes a cheap opulence, rather than seedy, its cut-glass chandeliers and lace
curtains merely to portend of the opium-infested byways and brothels that had
actually overrun this area in the late 19th century, catering to
clientele from all walks of life. And Gable’s Blackie, despite his namesake,
meant to infer a heart as dark as his soul, is actually a good egg wearing the
mask of a promoter for these dens of iniquity. Blackie’s reformation therefore is
proof positive of the influence a good Christian woman may have on a man who
has strayed from the teachings of the church. If anything, it is Spencer Tracy’s
Father Mullin who sports a curious ambiguity to bely his chosen calling. For
here is a man who completely understands at the outset what a quagmire Mary and
Blackie have stepped into, yet plies the pair with veiled empathy and promises,
reporting to test the fidelity in each’s commitment to the other. Mullin sides
with Mary. But he also believes in Blackie as the only man for Mary, despite
recognizing all of Blackie’s shortcomings. It clearly pleases Mullin to have
Blackie bowed and reduced to tears in the final reel. Yet, is it for the
redemption of Blackie’s soul that Mullin derives this satisfaction, or from a
rather insidious, and well-restrained jealousy, he has forsaken the earthly
pleasures of the flesh, now offered to Blackie by proxy, but at a terrible cost
to the life he once knew and believed in?
The reformation that occurs in Blackie after the quake
is indicative of the change in San Francisco itself, from its Sodom and
Gomorrah-esque antiquity to that thriving cosmopolitan metropolis, presumably
dedicated to more altruistic human pursuits.
Viewed today, San Francisco ranks among MGM’s finest efforts from
the 1930’s and one of Clark Gable’s biggest hits to boot. Alas, Gable and
Jeanette MacDonald would never again appear together in a picture, chiefly due
to MacDonald’s discontent while shooting the picture and Gable’s intense
dislike of her. Although the property had initially been brought to MacDonald
with shared enthusiasm, perhaps wisely thereafter, she realized the movie
really did not belong to her. It remains a Gable picture, as any picture
starring Gable (save Gone with The Wind) has remained so. There is just
too much he-man on that screen to suggest anyone else could carry their share
of the load. And while Gable’s ascension to the throne of uber-masculinity
would continue throughout the early 1940’s, until Carol Lombard’s death and
Gable’s enlistment in the war deprived him of that devilish ‘little boy’
quality he so infectiously possessed as a grown man, MacDonald’s tenure as
Metro’s grand diva was to rapidly unfurl, then fizzle after 1939. She made only
a few films in the early 40’s, retiring from the picture business to pursue
aspirations on the stage and a lucrative recording and radio career.
There is too little of Clark Gable available for the
public’s consumption today. Despite a formidable back-catalog to attest to all
the reasons why there can never be another Clark Gable, Warner Bros., the
current custodians of his MGM tenure in pictures, continues to hoard the good
stuff from public view. San Francisco’s Blu-ray debut – finally –
has been well worth the wait. One can only, sincerely, hope, the Warner
Archive (WAC) is hard at work preparing more from the Gable/MGM library for
hi-def in the very near future. For kick-starters,
we would like to see Gable on Blu in Wife vs. Secretary, Boom Town, China
Seas, Red Dust, Honky Tonk and Idiot’s Delight. And that’s just to
scratch the surface. WAC’s new-to-Blu of San Francisco is everything one
would hope it could be. Most of the B&W image exhibits a refined gray scale
with a very smooth visual characteristic that is quite satisfying. Age-related
artifacts have been eradicated. Contrast
is solid, although there remains some minor fading around the edges in the
early reels, with ever so slightly weaker than anticipated black levels. Buddy Gillespie's visual effects for the devastating quake, state of the art in their day, have not all-together aged well, particularly some of the traveling mattes that create image instability between each of the layers, thereby to expose their integration with the live-action stuff. This is, as they always appeared in the movie, and ought to be taken at face value as the very best quality the studio could then muster. What can I tell you? Audiences then were far more forgiving of these sorts of shortcomings. And to be sure, viewing them today serves as a reminder; first, as to how far visual effects have come since, but also, how sophisticated they were back in the pioneer days of the picture-making biz, when men like Gillespie were making this stuff up as they went along, with virtually no template on which to base their mark of excellence. But these scenes are softer in appearance than the rest of the movie, precisely due to primitive printer techniques of their day. Nothing more could have been done to achieve a more homogenized appearance herein. Arguably,
the most remarkable aspect of this Blu-ray is its sound design. For a 2.0 DTS
mono, it is remarkably aggressive during the earthquake sequence, summoning up
nature’s wrath quite convincingly. Extras include an alternate ending, and the
featurette on Gable, hosted by Liam Neeson, plus, several vintage short subjects,
albeit – none given further consideration to spruce them up for this hi-def
release. Bottom line: you simply cannot call yourself a cinema aficionado and
not own San Francisco on Blu-ray. Buy today. Treasure forever!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
2.5
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