Customer Reviews

San Francisco Noir

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is far more valuable than any travel guide I've read -- and most movie guides, for that matter. We all read novels or see movies set in particular cities and then find our hopes dashed when we go visit them. For instance: ever read The Fortress of Solitude and then book a hotel room in Times Square? Doesn't match up.

Luckily, the author has collected all the bits and pieces of the film noir canon so that when you go to San Francisco you won't be running around confused. More than any other major American city, SF seems to have one dominant mood, one overarching spirit. These films embody that spirit, and by knowing them, you'll know the city. (Trust me, I grew up there.)

On top of this, the book is well-written and entertaining, even if you have no immediate travel plans. Highly recommended.

This book is very handy, but the author shows his disdain for movies he does not like, which causes him to miss the boat on a few. I feel obliged to say (beforehand) that his writing on the two movies I list has enlightened me on things I did not know, though I have studied these movies for years. I am not from SF, so I can only remark on what I have seen, and what I know.

The movie "Hammett" may have been shot (mostly) on sound stage, but it does make use of a few real buildings that are still in existence today. He criticizes the stars acting abilities, though the actor was chosen to play Hammett in two different films - a rarity.

In "Impact" there are a lot more bits of San Francisco that he fails to mention. There was Anna May Wong's running down the alley in Chinatown, views of the Ferry Building that were taken before the Embarcadero hid the view. Street corners and views of bridges abound.

All of that said, I look at the book a lot. I consider it more valuable to my collection than "Footsteps in the Fog." which is about Hitchcock's SF and N. Cal.

Rich works any number of variations on a theme, and at first what seemed like a liability (the designer's rigid graphic scheme followed by what feels like an exact word count for every entry, no matter if the film is a great one or a lousy one) and makes it into a virtue. He is a skillful and persuasive prose writer, and his knowledge of these films is profound. Ok, there may be incidental errors here and there, as the other reviewers have indicated, but when you're reading his book you don't feel it.

What's amazing is the strength of his central argument, that San Francisco is such a haunted place that right away it became one of the chief noir sites--early on, in 1940, during the so-called "gateway period," and even more astonishing, that despite the general death of noir when color took over general release in the late 1950s, noir has never really died in San Francisco, and the movies keep getting made on a regular basis. Noir experts may scoff at the idea of Schlesinger's PACIFIC HEIGHTS as a noir, but Rich shows us how it fits into the old "real estate noir" category of THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL. Or David Fincher's THE GAME, or that crazy Richard Gere-Kim Basinger thriller FINAL ANALYSIS. Who knew? Yet somehow Nathanial Rich, with his quiet, insistent exegesis, makes you believe.

I haven't seen all of the films listed here, nor even seen all the locations, though I plan to take this book on my fist and make a tour soon of the ones I've missed. There are buildings we go by here in San Francisco, like that huge Art Deco pink marble slab up by Buena Vista Terrace, and we tell each other they were in this or that movie, VERTIGO or DARK PASSAGE, and yet is this a way of reassuring each other, or unsettling each other? Can't find that building in this book by the way. Maybe it was just an "urban" legend. If ever I meet Nathaniel Rich, I'll tug at his sleeve till he's by my side on top of that hill and I'll point to it.

The premise of the Noir series is to sample writers from each of the cities as they present stories that deal with areas with the city. This San Francisco edition is no exception. Sure some are much better than others but this is a wonderful way to sample authors you may not have tried. RECOMMENDED

The premise and format of this book are unique, but there are some major bits of misinformation in it which should have been looked over by the editor and/or the writer himself before the book was published. #1: the "Kezar Stadium" entry: "Dirty Harry" shot "Scorpio" in the LEG not the chest. #2:the "Flood Building" entry:stated that Dashiell Hammett was working for Pinkerton's, in the Flood Building, when he wrote "The Maltese Falcon" which is NOT TRUE. He had quit Pinkerton's long before he wrote the book(1922);"Red Harvest" and "The Dain Curse" both 1929 then "The Maltese Falcon" which was published in 1930. #3: the "Bullitt" entry:the author describes the chase scene and where it took place but when describing the end of the chase scene, the author flubs BIG TIME! McQueen DID NOT return to the police station in the Mustang as the author states. The Mustang was disabled when the car spun out on a dirt shoulder, opposite the explosion, the front end winding up in a "ditch" thereby breaking the front axel. Evidently the publisher/editor whizzed this book thru publication before checking it for major flaws!