Film review: San Francisco (1936)

This is really two films in one.  The first one, that does seem to drag on a bit, is a film about two nightclub owners sparring over a woman.  The woman is warbler Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald), a trained opera singer from Denver trying to make it in San Francisco, but whose lodgings burn down on New Year's Eve, forcing her to take the quickest available job, which happens to be at "Blackie" Norton (Clark Gable)'s nightclub.  He likes her "pipes," if not her slow style of singing, and quickly signs her up.  However, a rival, Jack Burley (Jack Holt) recognizes that she should really be singing opera, and tries to buy out her contract.  As this is what she really wants to do, it would be nice of Blackie to let her go, but he refuses.  Gable does a great job with Blackie, who is basically a charming oaf.  The local priest (Spencer Tracy) has known Blackie since they were both kids and knows that there's good in him, but he's fallen into the shady life.  There's a good deal of back and forth (I'm skipping over the part where people try to get Blackie to run for controller to try to do something about all the fires like the one that made Mary homeless because to be honest I didn't follow it), with Blackie falling for Mary, Mary falling for Blackie, them falling out again, Mary marrying Jack (!), Jack setting up Mary in the Opera, Blackie arriving on opening night intending to enforce the contract but getting so caught up in the opera (I think it's Faust) that he actually knocks out the cop he brought along to enforce the contract so that he doesn't interrupt it.  (He does a lot of punching people - he even likes to spar with Spencer Tracy in his spare time.)  But then Jack has Blackie's nightclub shut down just as the annual competition of acts from the various clubs is happening and Mary hears about it and goes up to represent Blackie's club, and wins (of course), but then Jackie is angry and ungrateful...  and then (FINALLY) the second movie starts.  And it's spectacular.  It's a disaster move about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and it's quite honestly the most convincing (and harrowing) disaster movie I've ever seen.

It pulls no punches, and it must have cost a fortune, because they're obviously destroying giant sets.  Buildings fall on adults, children and horses.  Dazed spouses dash about yelling the names of their loved ones, only to find them dead in the street.  Jack gets squashed, but it's not even glorified and Blackie feels no schadenfreude, especially as he has to convey the news to Jack's mother.  Who is just about to get her house dynamited - that's another thing we see a lot of - the city blowing up large swathes of it in an attempt to contain the fire that rages out of control.  Blackie wanders about through the ruins like the main character in War of the Worlds, desperately looking for Mary.  He finds her in the end, warbling "Nearer My God to Thee" at some funeral, and is so moved to find her alive that he drops to his knees and finds God (thereby undercutting one of my favorite features of his character, that he regards religion with contempt).  It ends with a happy announcement that the fire is out and everyone (and there are a lot of them - we're talking Biblical Epic level crowd scenes) joining together and marching from where they are (which looks like fields outside the city) towards the city (or The City) singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  This spoils it a bit for me, I must say, but that last half-hour or so of the film is flat out incredible and makes the whole film a must-see.  I could take or leave MacDonald, and Tracy is underused, but Gable is wonderful.  I love him in It Happened One Night, and he is if anything even more impressive here.  He is such a physical and engaged performer, and in that last section his stunned reaction to the chaos and devastation is completely natural and believable.  We watched it on the recommendation of one of Jami's law professors, and clearly he has great taste.  The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance next!