One of the first blockbuster disaster movies? Well, yes it is and its recreation of the 1906 earthquake which devastated the city is certainly the highlight of the film, but it also seeks to combine melodrama and musical light entertainment into the mix, not completely successfully I'd say.
My problem really is I suppose that the light operatic singing style of top-billing co-star Jeanette MacDonald just isn't to my taste, whether in full blown operatic or rousing show-girl mode. I appreciate that she was very popular with audiences at the time and probably helped the movie's stellar box office returns (it was the biggest hit of its year) but I think I could have coped with the absence of the musical angle altogether and the substitution of a better character actress in her part.
There are compensations elsewhere thankfully, Gable is great as the shady but popular nightclub owner Blackie Norton, denying God all the way through until the aftermath of the quake brings him to his knees in divine gratitude for the sparing of him and MacDonald's Mary Blake character. Again though, I considered that the religiosity in the script was a bit overdone as also seen in the near-saintly personification of Spencer Tracy's Father Tim who for the first of three films with Gable acts as the big guy's plain-speaking friend and conscience. Spence is undoubtedly very good however in the brief time he's on the screen (long enough though for him to get an Oscar nomination).
The narrative preamble to the earthquake is a bit hoary, awkwardly creating a love triangle among Gable, MacDonald and Jack Holt as Gable's older, monied Nob Hill rival where we see pure-as-the-driven-snow Jeanette as prepared to go on in tunic and tights at Gable's rowdy joint as ball-gowns and tiaras at the local opera house never mind her switching engagements between her two suitors at the drop of a hat.
Still, it all comes good, or should that be bad, when the disaster comes along in the last twenty minutes. Yes, you can see model work in the long shots but the montage sequence (possibly directed by an uncredited D.W. Griffith?) of the people caught up in the devastation is very effective, in particular, Gable milling through the forlorn survivors looking for Mary while the city is in flames behind him, foreshadowing an even more famous sequence he fulfilled later of course in "Gone With The Wind". I also liked the famous final scene when director Van Dyke shows the new rebuilt San Francisco risen from the ashes of its formerly ruined state.
For me then, Gable and to a lesser extent Tracy do well to carry the film until the special effects kick in before the big finish and as big finishes go, this film has one of the best.
My problem really is I suppose that the light operatic singing style of top-billing co-star Jeanette MacDonald just isn't to my taste, whether in full blown operatic or rousing show-girl mode. I appreciate that she was very popular with audiences at the time and probably helped the movie's stellar box office returns (it was the biggest hit of its year) but I think I could have coped with the absence of the musical angle altogether and the substitution of a better character actress in her part.
There are compensations elsewhere thankfully, Gable is great as the shady but popular nightclub owner Blackie Norton, denying God all the way through until the aftermath of the quake brings him to his knees in divine gratitude for the sparing of him and MacDonald's Mary Blake character. Again though, I considered that the religiosity in the script was a bit overdone as also seen in the near-saintly personification of Spencer Tracy's Father Tim who for the first of three films with Gable acts as the big guy's plain-speaking friend and conscience. Spence is undoubtedly very good however in the brief time he's on the screen (long enough though for him to get an Oscar nomination).
The narrative preamble to the earthquake is a bit hoary, awkwardly creating a love triangle among Gable, MacDonald and Jack Holt as Gable's older, monied Nob Hill rival where we see pure-as-the-driven-snow Jeanette as prepared to go on in tunic and tights at Gable's rowdy joint as ball-gowns and tiaras at the local opera house never mind her switching engagements between her two suitors at the drop of a hat.
Still, it all comes good, or should that be bad, when the disaster comes along in the last twenty minutes. Yes, you can see model work in the long shots but the montage sequence (possibly directed by an uncredited D.W. Griffith?) of the people caught up in the devastation is very effective, in particular, Gable milling through the forlorn survivors looking for Mary while the city is in flames behind him, foreshadowing an even more famous sequence he fulfilled later of course in "Gone With The Wind". I also liked the famous final scene when director Van Dyke shows the new rebuilt San Francisco risen from the ashes of its formerly ruined state.
For me then, Gable and to a lesser extent Tracy do well to carry the film until the special effects kick in before the big finish and as big finishes go, this film has one of the best.