1936 · mgm · macdonald · gable
San Francisco
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke1h 55m1936
A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.
Our read: San Francisco (1936) reads as a neutral, kinetic, grounded mgm · macdonald · gable entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Neutral, kinetic, measured mgm / macdonald, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured.
- brisk
- intense
Watching San Francisco tonight? Spin for your lens.
Everyone on the couch spins once and gets one craft to watch for. After the credits, compare what you caught.
Your lens for tonight
?
Everyone on the couch gets one craft to watch for. Spin the wheel to get yours. Sound on: the narrator reads your mission.
Availability in the UK · via JustWatch
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How San Francisco feels to watch.
Each axis is scored by hand, not from votes or genre averages. The bar uses the film's own colours.
What watching it is actually like.
“You want a classic Hollywood romance and musical that erupts into disaster spectacle.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if pre-Code era acting or sudden catastrophe sequences jar you.
Eight films that feel like this one.
Closest in the twelve-axis space, not “people also liked”. All films like San Francisco, with why →
Discussion
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