Shadows In The Fog: Classic San Francisco Film Noir
In the early 1940s, as World War II swept across Europe, the American gangster film of the 1930s seemed to evolve into something darker, more complex and permeated with existential dread. When French film critics first viewed these new American films after the war ended, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), and Laura (1944), the term film noir was coined. The flood of films that would later be considered film noir was unprecedented, lasting from the early 1940s until the late 1950s. The era of film noir can conveniently be bookended by two San Francisco noir classics, beginning in 1941 with The Maltese Falcon and ending with Vertigo in 1958.
Despite being much smaller than New York or Los Angeles, San Francisco was destined to become a major setting in the film noir cycle. Since Dashiell Hammett first pounded out the Maltese Falcon in 1928, under a cloud of cigarette smoke at 891 Post Street, the city has been mythologized as romantic and menacing, like the fog that often conceals it. The mystery and dread are enhanced by the harsh but majestic landscape. San Francisco noir films emphasize the steep hills, dark alleys, crooked streets, high and winding staircases, the two infamous prisons, the two breathtaking bridges, and more than liberal doses of Golden Gate fog.
The wild history of San Francisco was another factor in its profusion of crime films. Its reputation for hiding those who have run out of options and flee till there is nowhere else to run, till they reach Land’s End. The history of tolerance and lawlessness, the Gold Rush, the rowdy Barbary Coast days, the political corruption and graft, and a long string of infamous criminals all ripened its crime film potential.
Another advantage San Francisco had was being the gateway to mysterious Asia. With the largest Chinese population outside of China and the strong presence of other Asian cultures, San Francisco projected the intrigue and enchantment of the Far East. Of course, the noir perspective was mostly interested in the violent, exotic, and lustful aspects of Asia such as opium dens, the Tong Wars of the 1890s, and the Forbidden City nightclub era. All these elements were exploited with exaggerated effect in the history of San Francisco crime films.
Ironically, the film that focused most intensely on the geography of the city had the least number of scenes really filmed in the city. When new director John Huston created the third movie version of The Maltese Falcon in 1941, he strove for the hard edge of the novel and its continual references to San Francisco locations, rather than the light tone of the first two films and their ambivalence to any geographic location. The film begins with stock footage of the city, especially the waterfront view of the Bay Bridge, but all the other scenes were recreations of San Francisco streets in the studio lots of Los Angeles.
For The Lady From Shanghai (1947), Orson Welles focused on nautical aspects of the city, filming Whaler’s Cove and the Walhalla Bar in Sausalito, and the Marina by the St. Francis Yacht Club. His spellbinding Chinatown scenes included a live Chinese opera performance at the Mandarin Theater, the Chinese Telephone Exchange, and a cameo by the still existent dive bar Li Po. And though his Steinhardt Aquarium scene was a masterpiece exposing the common ground of hallucination and psychology, the true infamous scenes of the film were set in the Funhouse of the now long gone Playland-By-The-Beach. The harrowing climax of the film, the crazy mirror gun-down, was so complex it required highly technical sets to be built.
San Francisco native Delmer Daves got to use the screen’s most magnetic and charismatic couple in Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Dark Passage (1947). Daves made great use of San Quentin in Bogart’s escape scene, in which his luck takes a great turn when a radiant and flirty Lauren Bacall picks him up from the roadside and sneaks him past a Golden Gate Bridge roadblock. Great shots of the old city abound in Dark Passage, including panoramas from rooftops, the Harry’s Wagon carriage diner, the Filbert Steps, the Kean Hotel, the Mission Street Greyhound station, and the first major crime scene at Fort Point.
Considered by many to be the definitive film noir, Jacques Tourneur’s Out Of The Past (1947) features a confident, cynical and wisecracking private detective, an alluring and deadly femme fatale, and a megalomaniac mob boss. Though the crew filmed several nice scenes in Acapulco and the Sierra Nevada mountains, the San Francisco it created was mythic and fabricated, like an exquisite noir nightmare.
Closing out the splendid San Francisco cinema decade of the 1940s is the once forgotten dark jewel of Woman On The Run (1950). Powered by the world-weary wisecracking of Ann Sheridan, Woman is a glorious vintage noir tour of the city that features Telegraph Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, Embarcadero, and Washington Square. The film’s climactic rollercoaster scene is supposed to be Playland-By-The-Beach at Ocean Beach, but actually was filmed at the since-destroyed Ocean Park Pier in Santa Monica. The disturbing mechanical laugh of Laffing Sal was the now vanished Ocean Park Sal. The San Francisco Laffing Sal still proudly reigns at the Musee Mechanique at Fisherman’s Wharf.
Each of these films features some mesmerizingly beautiful portraits of vintage San Francisco, real or imagined, and aglow in radiant, shining black and white. Some people say that time travel is not possible, but when you become fully engrossed in these nicely-aged classics, your consciousness is fully immersed in another time and place. You might find yourself crooning a lost sultry jazz tune, entranced by a shimmering black & white cityscape, yearning for a snappy fedora, or developing an uncontrollable fetish for quirky 1940s technology.
See The Top 5 San Francisco Film Noir Classics of the 1940s.
Originally published on Fandor, 2017.
Gustavus Kundahl is a San Francisco writer who enjoys three-minute workouts, two-minute songs and one-minute meditations. He can be found on Clement Street, bartering for used books and sake sets.
