One hundred years of quaking at the Pacific Film Archive
By Dennis Harvey
Earthquakes are just about the evolutionary start point for cinematic spectacle, whether it’s Fatty Arbuckle landing on his arse or Los Angeles landing on an all-star cast in the camp-classic 1970s disaster flick “Earthquake.” Jiggle the camera. Wiggle the actors. Throw some trash around and drop a couple papier-mache boulders….
Of course, this isn’t quite so funny if you actually live where large sudden fissures have periodically made life very difficult in the past and no doubt will do so again. But that hasn’t stopped Hollywood filmmakers from utilizing seismic action for fun and/or profit.
Many Bay Area exhibits, seminars and art events will pay tribute to the centenary of the Really Big One this year, but few will be more entertaining than the Pacific Film Arcive’s 65 Seconds That Shook the World: Commemorating the 1906 Earthquake. Rattling Berkeley this weekend only, the four-night series encompasses titles from the shocking to the schlocking, from the avant-garde to the very old-guard.
None could be older than those on Saturday’s program, a lecture by geographer/historian Gray Brechin that will be illustrated by rare silent shorts actually shot in the wake of S.F.‘s catastrophe one hundred years ago. These Library of Congress artifacts capture the infamous post-quake fires, ruined city landmarks, refugee camps and military emergency operations.
It didn’t take long, naturally, for sober memories to recede and the temblor of ought-six to become just another giddy plot hook: In 1919’s “The Virtuous Vamp,” for instance, or 1932’s “Frisco Jenny,” wherein it’s the reason that orphaned Ruth Chatterton grows up to be the mistress of an ill-famed “bawdy house.” No second Act of God is required for her redemption, though naturally that occurs only after a good long dose of pre-Code naughtiness.
The mother of all S.F.-go-boom hits is, of course, MGM’s all-star “San Francisco,” in which Jeanette MacDonald trilled “Open your golden gates,” while both Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy refrain from smacking her one. This is such an obvious choice for any series like the PFA’s that, in fact, the PFA decided to pass on it. (However, S.F.‘s Balboa Theatre is showing the classic next week, April 16-18.) Instead, curator Steve Seid opted for the lesser-known but nearly-as-splashy chestnut “Flame of Barbary Coast,” best remembered (when at all) as little Republic Studios’ attempt to do what MGM did with a near-identical plot — on a fraction of the budget. This was their prestige release to celebrate a decade’s survival, and isn’t imitation the greatest form of self-flattery? John Wayne (could even an 8.0 knock that loping gait off-balance?) plays a “hick rancher” battling gambler Joseph Schildkraut for the hand of saloon chanteuse Ann Dvorak. This is perhaps the only movie in which The Duke plays a character actually named Duke. What’s more, flaxen-haired Dvorak is called Flaxen! Eventually a chandelier falls down, representing mass destruction, in “A Shock Climax Such As The Screen Has Never Known!” Like every major-release earthquake movie ever made, “Flame” was nominated for a Best Sound Oscar.
Cheaper yet was modestly titled “The Night the World Exploded,” a 1959 true obscurity that wanders away from San Francisco to roam the less geographically specific near-future. A maverick scientist type invents a machine that can predict earthquakes, but no one believes him. They are soon sorry they didn’t. What’s responsible for all these fissuring faults? A hitherto unknown explosive chemical located deep in Carlsbad Caverns, of course! The actual Twist dance craze didn’t arrive for another five years, but you’d think otherwise given all the swiveling and wall-grabbing executed by a cast that included lovely Kathryn Grant, who the very same annum left such dramatic glories behind to become Mrs. Bing Crosby.
Yea bigger, louder, and ever so much more deliciously embarrassing is no none other than “Earthquake” itself, another obvious choice perhaps — but apparently this was one the PFA could not ignore. Made the year Nixon got booted out of the White House, released smack between the daft “Airport 1975” and dumb “Towering Inferno” (a 1974 Best Picture nominee), this was the movie so star-laden, so literate (“Give me your pantyhose dammit!”), illogical (59-year-old Lorne Greene plays 52-year-old Ava Gardner’s dad) so simply 100 percent chest-pawingly Charlton Heston that they had to invent a whole new technology for it.
The process was called Sensurround, and it made a loud rumbling noise and kinda shook you; just like riding the subway — in a theatre seat! Subsequent excuses to use it didn’t get very far (simulating you-know-what in “Rollercoaster,” the sound of riot-collapsed football stands in “Two-Minute Warning”), but what could’ve topped “Earthquake,” anyway? Latter day audio experts Meyer Sound will do their best to re-create that unique original butt-shaking racket at the PFA’s Friday night screening. Whether someone will be pushing cardboard “buildings” onto the audience as well is unknown.
To clear your mind for this onslaught you may need to first experience the very different “Artistic Disasters” program that kicks off this series. A free Thursday bill featuring experimental, personal and goofy short meditations on moody Mother Nature from the likes of George Kuchar and U.K. collaborators Semiconductor.
04.06.2006