Seeing movies in San Francisco has all the advantages of seeing a film in any big, cosmopolitan city. The audiences are generally much more receptive, and also critical, and make the experience very different than seeing a film anywhere else. For anyone taking a vacation, going from their downtown hotel to the local theatre, it’s sometimes a wonderful experience in world cinema, and sometimes it becomes striking how many films are made in and about the city itself.
San Francisco may have a reputation for cop films, with hits like 48 Hours, Dirty Harry (yes, the original one), and Bullitt, with some of the most exciting car chase scenes ever caught on celluloid. But there are also a number of other kinds of films made here as well, with intimate, exceptional dramas like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Days of Wine and Roses. There are also films like X-Men, Monsters Vs. Aliens, George of the Jungle, and Herbie the Love Bug that take some common ideas of a world based on San Francisco, and then morph it for maximum effect. Then there are films that are more focused on the multiple cultures here, like The Mistress of Spices, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Joy Luck Club, and Milk.
These all make up a kind of testament to what San Francisco is, a glass bead game with multiple facets, constantly revealing and unveiling, and at the same moment hiding something new. The San Francisco Film Commission has been pretty instrumental in keeping the city centered as a location for world cinema, and there are many independent filmmakers and small companies working to document the dreams and realities of the city on film and video. The first moving picture was taken in this part of the country, and it set a standard for the city, as well as a kind of fortunate precedent. Small visions of great poetic beauty, and large visions of the state of the world are worthy of capturing the audience’s attention here, and it’s up to the artists to filter in and out what makes sense, and what makes a dream.
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