San Francisco Films that Get It: Part I

Having a background in both film and hospitality, I have a particular interest in movies depicting San Francisco.  Many times (too many times) Hollywood will attempt to capture the essence of a place, without any real understanding of it.   How many times have you seen a move of a place you are familiar with and see a car on the screen turn down one street, only to appear in a completely different part of town when it rounds the corner from the other side.

Or how many times have you seen a movie of a place you know, only to see the filmmakers get it wildly wrong.  If you remember the film, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from 2003, there is a car chase scene through the streets of Venice, Italy.

That's right, I said through the streets of Venice, Italy.

Sometimes films attempt to extrapolate the culture and vibe of a place by overemphasizing certain local colloquialisms and quirks.  I have known many people in Minnesota for decades, and they tell me that when they travel, barely anyone even knew where the state was.  Then the movie Fargo came out in 1996, and when people learned they were from Minnesota, what usually followed was a chorus of, "Oooo, Yahs." and "You Betchas."

Unlike Spike Lee's or Wood Allen's films in New York, I think it's safe to say that for the most part films made in San Francisco, at best utilize the city as a backdrop.  Unless it is an historical drama like Milk or Zodiac (which had to be made here because they take place here) most movies made in the city like Ant-Man or The Wedding Planner never really go beyond the postcard veneer.

Yet San Francisco is a dynamic city despite the sum of its Hollywood parts.  Its representation on film has been mostly compartmentalized, however there are a number of movies (some of which you have never heard of) that do capture the idea of what it is like to live within its 49 square miles.  You won't find it in Nash Bridges or Monsters vs. Aliens, but you may discover it in some of these films.

Probably the earliest film to "get" San Francisco, was Erich von Stroheim's 1924 production of Greed.  Adapted from the Frank Norris book McTeauge, it is the story of a dentist who taught himself the craft in an age when that practice was acceptable but now must be certified by the state or go out of business.  Throughout the story he seeks ways to make money, which ultimately leads to his own demise. 

This is as basic a summation of the story I can make, but suffice it to say the film Greed was shot on location in the city and reflects one of the major themes of the book, when a frontier town becomes a modern metropolis.  In fact, in a time when film productions rarely left the TMZ, Eric Von Stroheim was extremely faithful to the original story and shot at many of the San Francisco locations depicted in the book.

Dark Passage from 1947 is another one of those rare Hollywood films which was shot entirely on location in San Francisco, and not on a backlot.  From the ritzy Telegraph Hill apartment Lauren Bacall’s character lives in, to the divey diner where Humphrey Bogart's surgically altered protagonist is recognized and blackmailed.  He even tells a cab driver the diner's address on Post Street, which was actually a correct.  The diner is long gone, but the building is still there to this day.

Many other films were shot on location in the post war era, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo from 1958, or Bullitt a decade later.  Yet all they really accomplished was approximating a pastiche of San Francisco.  

The Haight-Ashbury evolved from a sleepy working-class enclave into the counterculture Mecca, a destination for the next five (going on six) decades only three short years later.  The Summer of Love descended on the area in 1967, and although there have been many films about the hippie era in San Francisco (i.e. Herbie the Love Bug or Butterflies Are Free), few captured the zeitgeist of the times.

As there was no internet in 1968, what the world knew of the Summer of Love was from the pop music and TV news stories, usually from the perspective of,  "hung up old, Mr. Normal!" Roger Corman's Psych Out was the first opportunity for the world to see San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood at this pivotal cultural and historical moment.

The Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood

Amongst his many talents, Roger Corman was particularly keen at identifying pop culture trends and made low budget films to capitalize on them.  When tens of thousands of hippies flocked to San Francisco in 1967 to “tune in turn on and drop out,” mainstream culture was slow to pick up on it.   Roger Corman knew that Hollywood was not making films to appeal to that demographic.

When referencing San Francisco's Summer of Love, most people cite the pop music associated with the era.  Performers like Jefferson Airplane, Carlos Santana, and Janis Joplin cemented the San Francisco sound in pop culture.  Psychedelic music became synonymous with the Summer of Love, but Hollywood was slow to capitalize on the burgeoning Baby Boomers.  If any one singular film is synonymous with the Summer of Love and the hippie era, it's Psych Out.