10 Quality Movies That Left Their Hearts in San Francisco

San Francisco is my second favorite city in America. My job headquarters is there, which means I get to see the City by the Bay at least twice a year. Like my favorite city, New York, San Francisco has given us so many cinematic contributions. It’s made people famous (Michael Douglas, for example) and has more weary, grumpy movie cops than any other place in the world. Directors like David Fincher and Paul Verhoeven shot critical favorites in Frisco, and everyone from Mrs. Doubtfire to Full House’s Uncle Jesse lives there.

Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco, and this past weekend residents lined up to see Woody Allen’s return to the city (after Take the Money and Run). In honor of Blue Jasmine, which adds its locations to the countless other addresses San Francisco tourists look for when they arrive, here are 10 San Francisco based movies.

10.) 48 Hrs.

Nick Nolte plays the first weary, grumpy San Francisco cop on this list. His take no prisoners attitude does not extend to his actions: He takes a prisoner named Reggie Hammond on a 48-hour furlough to help him find a cop killer named Ganz (James Remar). Hammond is the role that rocketed Eddie Murphy to big-screen fame. A star was born the moment he pays homage to Popeye Doyle in the film’s now famous bar scene.

I admit I’ve never liked this movie. Its success unleashed a wave of salt-and-pepper buddy movies where the Salt is superior to the Pepper and Hollywood calls it progress. Still, Nolte is as committed to his gruff racism as Murphy is to his 4-letter words. Co-writer-director Walter Hill keeps it exciting and well-paced without resorting to 25 million cuts.

9.) A View to a Kill

Roger Moore’s last outing as 007 featured a killer Duran Duran theme song, Grace Jones as a Bond Girl, Christopher Walken as the bad guy and the Golden Gate Bridge as the climactic set piece. The Bond supervillain’s evil plan is foiled, but in hindsight, I wish he had been successful. Because Walken’s plan to destroy Silicon Valley would have saved me 26 years of employment torture. View was Moore’s last outing as Bond, and it’s only fitting that one of the last things filmdom’s freakiest Bond would do is pull up to Grace Jones’ bumper. The Golden Gate Bridge features prominently in the film’s poster, with Bond and Tanya Roberts running up its cables. Unlike Octopussy’s poster, which featured Maud Adams with 8 arms, A View to a Kill keeps its advertised promise. If only it were as good as its theme song.

8.) Freebie and the Bean

Ah, how I long for the bygone era of my youth, when Hollywood could put racial slurs into movie titles and get them displayed in giant letters on a marquee. Announcers would say the words too! Before WPIX Channel 11 ran Freebie and the Bean 18 million times, I saw the uncut, R-rated version at the second run Pix Theater in my hometown. I was 5, and I don’t know what my parents were thinking. Richard Rush’s buddy cop movie stars James Caan and Alan Arkin as the titular characters, the latter of whom is supposed to be Mexican. Practically remade as Bad Boys 2, Freebie and the Bean is one of the most horribly racist, homophobic and violent comedies I’ve ever seen. It’s also pretty damn funny, with the highlight being a car that somehow finds its way into an apartment. Caan and Arkin will stop at nothing—and I mean NOTHING—to bring down their perp. I would feel incredibly dirty recommending this to anyone, which is probably a ringing endorsement.

7.) The Bridge

I never saw the Golden Gate Bridge the first time I drove across it. There was so much fog that I had to rely on the car in front of me to see where I was going. I thought I was going to drive off it by accident. This was a horrifying prospect; I’m afraid of heights and, as someone who drowned and was dead for several minutes, I am absolutely terrified of the water. My first drive across San Francisco’s most famous landmark was scary, but also ethereal, as if I were driving through Heaven to get to the Pearly Gates. A lot of people must make this heavenly connection, because the Golden Gate Bridge is the most chosen place in the world for suicides. The makers of the 2006 documentary, The Bridge, spent a year filming on location, looking for (and attempting to stop) potential jumpers. While they were able to save some, their cameras still caught 23 suicides, making this something of a snuff movie. Director Eric Steel interviews family members and friends of those who jumped. He also talks to a man who survived the plunge, which, according to Wikipedia, lasts 4 seconds before one hits the water at 75 mph. Years after seeing The Bridge, I am still profoundly disturbed by it and wish I had not watched it.

6.) Experiment in Terror

Aided by a great Henry Mancini score and spectacular black-and-white widescreen views of San Francisco by his cinematographer, Philip Lathrop, director Blake Edwards presents exactly what the title suggests. His second teaming with Lee Remick is another departure from his comedy features, and is genuinely scary and unsettling. Remick’s sister Stefanie Powers has been kidnapped by a mystery man who’s clearly psychotic. Remick’s first encounter with him is a white knuckle affair, and I loved that her character isn’t stupid — she makes some wise, though dangerous choices. Aiding her is weary, grumpy San Francisco cop Glenn Ford. Plenty of Frisco locales from the 1960’s are on display, and they are gorgeously rendered, making this a must see on the big screen.

5.) Milk

I was in the Castro on one of Milk’s shooting days. Gus van Sant’s crew recreated the district circa the time Harvey Milk rose to prominence as the first openly gay elected official. It looked like a less pervy version of the Times Square of my childhood. Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone were gunned down by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor played in this film by an excellent Josh Brolin. White was tried using what the newspapers referred to as “the Twinkie Defense.” Defense lawyers proved, and not for the last time, that a scared White man with a gun shooting an unarmed minority is simply not murder according to the United States justice system. (White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.) Sean Penn won the Oscar for playing Milk, and the screenplay won as well. I prefer the documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk” over this, but Milk is a fine introduction to an important American figure cut down in his prime.

4.) Bullitt

Steve McQueen plays — you guessed it — a weary, grumpy San Francisco cop in Peter Yates’ action classic. Bullitt is famous for the chase scene that sends McQueen, his Mustang and the Dodge Charger he’s chasing up and down the famed San Francisco hills. The cars reach absurdly high altitudes as they fly through the air. The scene is so iconic that even a certain dirty San Francisco character, who’ll show  up here shortly, paid homage to it in one of his films. Precedes The French Connection by 3 years, and like that film, was shot with real cars and real stuntmen, not this CGI Fast and the Furious malarkey the younger generation seems to like. As a side note, I have driven in San Francisco proper twice. The first time, I hit the top of a hill at the advised 25 mph and my cheap ass rental car went airborne. The cars in Bullitt are going 110 mph. I’m surprised they didn’t bounce into space.

3.) The Maltese Falcon

I went to dinner at Mortons Steakhouse in San Francisco and was met by one of the Maltese Falcons used in John Huston’s 1941 classic. The 1931 pre-code version is dirtier (it includes the naked Brigid O’Shaughnessy scene from Hammett’s book) but this version has Humphrey Bogart in one of his iconic roles. Bogie is tough as nails as Sam Spade, and Huston keeps the novel’s amorality and its San Francisco locations. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet are so memorable here, as are Gladys George, Ward Bond and badass Elisha Cook, Jr. The weak link is Mary Astor, and I know I’m in the minority for saying this, but I didn’t buy her for one minute. She does no damage to this masterpiece. The last line, which is brilliant, became the title of a Carly Simon song, which is NOT so brilliant.

2.) Dirty Harry

Do you feel lucky, punk? You do if you’re Clint Eastwood. This is the role Clint will forever be associated with, and this first film in the 5-film series has a tautness the others can only imitate. Director Don Siegel, who made 5 films with Clint, tells this thinly veiled Zodiac killer fictionalization with lean gusto. Pauline Kael called it “a fascist classic,” and this weary, grumpy San Francisco cop’s methods are calibrated for maximum audience bloodlust. He may be uncouth, racist and sexist, but I still love me some Dirty Harry. He and his .44 Magnum were fixtures in my childhood and adolescence, and I’ve seen  all five films multiple times. While some consider Dirty Harry the best of the lot, I’m partial to The Enforcer. It was the first movie in the series that I saw.

1.) Vertigo

It topped the Sight and Sound List, so why not here? I shouldn’t have to tell you anything about this movie, besides how it turned Jimmy Stewart into an obsessed, scary, cooch-hound of a pervert. There are Vertigo tours you can take in San Francisco and even a bar called Vertigo where the movie plays on TV’s all the time.

The Bernard Herrmann score should be as famous as his Psycho one, and Kim Novak is just perfect as the object of Jimmy’s unhealthy affection. Barbara Bel Geddes doesn’t get enough credit here, nor do the original source material’s writers. Like Les Diaboliques, Vertigo is based on a novel by by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Those guys sure know how to pen a plot twist. If you ask me my favorite Hitchcock, I’ll lie to you and say it’s this one. The truth: my fave Hitchcock is The Birds. Shhh.

(Bonus feature: Here I am being touristy, at Fort Point, the place where Kim Novak took her plunge. Drat! I’m not in VistaVision.)