Watching San Francisco is basically just waiting for the earthquake

Is this worth your time?

Honestly, only if you like those old-school Hollywood spectacles where everyone talks a little too loud. If you have zero patience for love triangles that go on for an hour before the actual plot happens, you will probably be bored out of your mind. But, if you like seeing how they did special effects before computers existed, stick around.

Clark Gable is doing his usual thing here as the saloon owner. He’s charming, sure, but he’s basically playing the same guy he plays in every other movie from this era. Spencer Tracy shows up as a priest, which feels like a weird choice, but he makes it work because he’s Spencer Tracy. They have this weird, bickering chemistry that feels more interesting than the romance.

Jeanette MacDonald is the singer caught in the middle. She spends a lot of time looking distressed and singing, which is fine, but I kept waiting for her to do something that wasn't just reacting to the two guys yelling at each other.

The big event

The movie is famous for the earthquake sequence. It’s actually pretty wild. You can tell they put a massive amount of effort into the practical sets, and the whole thing shakes for what feels like an eternity. It makes you realize how much modern CGI usually misses the mark on scale.

• The earthquake scenes: Still hold up surprisingly well.
• The dialogue: Very 1930s. Everyone is always making speeches.
• The pacing: It’s a bit of a slog until the ground starts moving.

I couldn't help but think about how different this feels compared to something like Manslaughter, where the stakes feel way more contained. Here, everything is just huge. Everything is desperate. The actors are practically sweating through their costumes just trying to keep up with the scale of the set pieces.

There’s a scene where they’re just standing in a crowded room, and the extras are clearly just milling about in the background. It feels less like a real city and more like a stage play that someone decided to blow up. I don't know, maybe that’s the charm of it. It doesn't try to be realistic. It tries to be big.

If you watch it, skip the first forty minutes and go grab a coffee. Nothing happens that you can't figure out from the last five minutes of the film anyway. Just don't go in expecting a quiet drama, because nobody in this movie knows how to whisper.

Also, the ending is a bit of a mess, but it’s the kind of mess that feels earned after watching a whole city get flattened. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely a moment in film history that I’m glad I saw. 🏚️