Old San Francisco

Old San Francisco (1927)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Fifth Vitaphone production from Warner is silent all the way through with the exception of some sound effects used in small places. The film tells the story of a Spanish family who moved to what would become San Francisco to set up their ranch but in 1906 an evil Chinese landowner (Warner Oland) tries to steal it away. The Spanish daughter (Dolores Costello) must try and save her land even though the odds are against here and all the fighting leads up to the famous earthquake. This is a decent movie at best, which works on some levels but is rather disappointing in others. This type of revenge story isn't anything new and had been going on as early as the Griffith shorts at Biograph. Storywise nothing new is really done here but a few nice things happen with the new setting of Chinatown. Today the racial stereotypes of the Chinese folks would be considered racist but what we see here was accepted in 1927. Costello is pretty good in the lead role as she brings some energy to her character that helps the film. Oland is also very good as the Chinese man who pretends to be white in order to try and steal the land. Charles Emmett Mack and Anna May Wong have supporting roles and are pretty good as well. I'm not 100% certain but the final earthquake sequence appears to have scenes borrowed from the Lon Chaney film The Shock, which was also set in San Francisco and featured the legendary earthquake. With that in mind, the final earthquake sequence really isn't that impressive but there are some newly filmed scenes mixed in of building burning and these effects look pretty good. The Vitaphone sound effects are all rather small and include a few gunshots early on, bells ringing and a few screams during the earthquake.

This is one of the last silent films, made just before "The Jazz Singer" came out, and it is technically better than most of the other silent films as it used Warner Brothers Vitaphone technique.

It also benefits from a tour d'force by Dolores Costello (who was the wife of John Barrymore at the time) and is probably one of her best roles. She manages to go beyond the silent film melodrama, as does Anna May Wong, the busiest Asian woman in films in the first half of the 20th Century.

Warner Oland (a Swede who nonetheless almost always play an Asian, including his stint as Charlie Chan) shows up as a Chinese thug who masquerades as a White man, although Oland is not at the top of his game here.

The climax of the film is the 1906 earthquake and for the time it is spectacular. The version of the restored film I saw had both the beginning and the end in harsh sepia tones, but the middle was fine.

The film is well worth viewing as one of the last great silent films.

The climax of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake might be model work made for the film, but it also looks like it might be stock footage (perhaps from Lon Chaney's movie THE SHOCK or something else). In any case, this film and THE SHOCK adopt the "cosmic retribution" angle that the dust-up was really a Gomorrah-like act of divine intervention against the Barbary excesses of Chinatown and such. Anna May Wong is thanklessly wasted as the sinfully exquisite assistant of future Charlie Chan Warner Oland, a ruthless land shark who doesn't let anyone know he's really Chinese. He keeps his jeering dwarf brother in a cage and terrorizes the heiress of an old Spanish family, whose righteous Christian iconography pierces his "mongol heart." He codifies the social and sexual threat of "passing" and miscegenation, which is depicted as repulsive to both races. But this is all articulated in religious terms. The anglos refer to his "heathen gods," while the Chinese get irate that he "betrays his ancestors." For a festival of Asian-American images in silent films, compare this with the more ambiguous sexual morality of Cecil B. DeMille's THE CHEAT with Sessue Hayakawa, the tragedy of Wong's role in THE TOLL OF THE SEA, the later films made by Hayakawa, or even Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOMS.

In turn of the the century San Francisco the noble Vasquez family are threatened with the loss of their property by the unscrupulous Mongol, Chris Buckwell. Buckwell, a Chinatown denizen holds considerable influence and sway in Frisco and does not hesitate to acquire by dubious means a piece of the action from local area merchants and land owners. The Vasquez family who has fought and died to keep their land over generations now must pin their hopes on the beautiful daughter Dolores (Dolores Costello) of the patriarch who aligns herself with a rambunctious Irishman (Charles Mack) to combat the diabolical Buckwell who in turn has lascivious designs on Dolores.

Despite being wrought with bias and ethnic stereotyping, Old San Francisco is a splendid example of visual poetry that displays the silent art form in all it's glory. Camera movement is minimal (but used brilliantly at the films climax) with nearly every image a beautiful tableaux of light and composition in group shot and close-up. The underground Chinatown that Buckwell moves between from his 112 Sierra avenue address is a dark, mysterious nether world, both exotic and threatening.

Warner Oland as Buckwell is a superb villain. In addition to desiring all things Vasquez he uses his formidable connections to shake down local Chinese merchants who claim that while "he is of the blood he is not of the breed". In addition to his greed and pursuit of power he worships false idols, exploits the religious fervor of others and keeps his dwarf brother in a cage. For the most part he remains stoic, utilizing an evil sneer that understatedly sums up his consummate villainy.

While director Alan Crosland (The Jazz Singer) is at best a footnote in film history he helms a work as good as any silent master. Once he gets past a boiler plate prologue his use of light and shadow, close-up and reaction shot as well as utilization of props as insignificant as a broken gate show the work of a storyteller in complete control. Combined with a beautiful musical score and title cards of polished prose Old San Francisco is a feast of esoteric ambiance and textbook silent film making.

Geez! People who try to project 21st century political correctness on those who were living their lives decades (sometimes centuries) ago give me a pain. Are they saying we've now achieved some level of perfection, or at least that now everything has been figured out? They have the advantage of being sure that years in the future when present-day man is criticized for events and attitudes that even those enlightened ones can't foresee, they'll not be around to hear it.

These attempts to ensure that anyone not holding some particular viewpoint must necessarily be dismissed as irrelevant and evil despite the level of talent of the offender (occasionally a genius) by the critics (usually possessing no talent).