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San Francisco

San Francisco

Drama · Romance · Music · 1936

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

Movie details

San Francisco

“She Fell In Love . . . with the toughest guy on the toughest street in the world!”

1936 Drama · Romance · Music 1h 55m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

7.1 / 10

6.3K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

92 %

Tomatometer

TMDB

6.6 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over San Francisco?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Sweet November

Sweet November

Drama · 2001

Nelson is a man devoted to his advertising career in San Francisco. One day, while taking a driving test at the DMV, he meets Sara. She is very different from the other women in his life. Nelson causes her to miss out on taking the test and later that day she tracks him down. One thing leads to another and Nelson ends up living with her through a November that will change his life forever.

Where it lives

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Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.

Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

W.S. Van Dyke

Written by

Anita Loos · Robert E. Hopkins · Herman J. Mankiewicz

Clark Gable

Clark Gable

Blackie Norton

Jeanette MacDonald

Jeanette MacDonald

Mary Blake

Spencer Tracy

Spencer Tracy

Father Tim Mullin

Jack Holt

Jack Holt

Jack Burley

Jessie Ralph

Jessie Ralph

Mrs. Maisie Burley

Ted Healy

Ted Healy

Mat

Shirley Ross

Shirley Ross

Trixie

Court is in session

Put San Francisco on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.