Product Details

• Region: All Regions
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000EAR0AO
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,766 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must See, March 8, 2006

By 

NABNYC (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: San Francisco By W.S. Van Dyke w/ Clark Gable (DVD)

This is a terrific film and is a must-see for film lovers. It has the 1930s beautiful gowns (for Janette MacDonald) combined with the charm of rascal Clark Gable and the sincere goodness of Catholic Priest Spencer Tracy. One of the first of many pairings between Gable and Tracy (Boom Town with Lana Turner and Test Pilot with Myrna Loy being two other terrific ones), the chemistry between the two men makes the movie worth seeing even without the romance. It reflects the depression-era social realism which flourished briefly in U.S. films, with a terrific populist theme. And Janette MacDonald is just beautiful and sings like a bird. One of the best films of the 30s.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic film - Bad reproduction, April 30, 2006

By 

PMontague "IPhoto" (Swisher, IA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: San Francisco By W.S. Van Dyke w/ Clark Gable (DVD)

As anyone who would read this already knows, this film is a five-star, must-have for any collection. However, this DVD offers a VERY POOR reproduction of the film with highlights blown out in many scenes and a general loss of the black-and-white tonality that made these films great. It was obviously reproduced from a print that was many generations from the master.

Too bad, because the sound track is reproduced well.

My VHS tape has better video. I'm sorry I gave it away when I ordered this DVD.

4 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Old-Fashioned Period Melodrama Saved by the Last Twenty Minutes, March 6, 2006

By 

Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: San Francisco By W.S. Van Dyke w/ Clark Gable (DVD)

On the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, it's worth seeking out this 1936 chestnut if you can - even though it represents both the best and worst of what MGM did back in Hollywood's golden age. Be forewarned that it's slow going until the last twenty minutes when the studio pulled out all the stops to recreate the legendary earthquake and fire that destroyed the entire city. It's hard to believe that neither the Golden Gate Bridge nor the Bay Bridge was even built when this film was made, and in fact, only thirty years had elapsed since the earthquake occurred. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke in less than subtle fashion, the patently old-fashioned melodrama stars Clark Gable as notorious gambling hall owner Blackie Norton and Jeanette McDonald as virginal parson's daughter Mary Blake. A large supporting cast was assembled, which included the redoubtable Spencer Tracy, then a rising MGM star.

The silly, cornball story revolves around Blackie's attempts to turn Mary into the hall chanteuse despite her aspiration to become a world-famous opera singer. Mary falls for Blackie for reasons unclear except that he's Gable. A limited actress when speaking, the overly mannered McDonald sings frequently in the film in that soprano operetta vocal style that apparently was popular back then, and there is even an overlong sequence where she plays Marguerite in Gounod's "Faust" and brings Blackie rather incredibly to tears. In a thankless role, Tracy plays the pugnacious but kindly Father Mullen, who symbolizes the film's heavy religious overtones resulting in a most unbelievable conversion at the end. However, the recreations of the earthquake and fires are impressive by any standards, much less those of 1936. Director W.S. Van Dyke seems to borrow quite a bit from the Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic "Battleship Potemkin", but the quick cuts and implied carnage work very well in any context. Anita Loos, who penned the classic "The Women", wrote the heavy-handed script.