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Location, Location, Location: The House and Family Romance in The Last Black Man in San Francisco
If you're going to San FranciscoBe sure to wear some flowers in your hairIf you're going to San FranciscoYou're gonna meet some gentle people there
With the premiere of Joe Talbot's first feature film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, almost universal acclaim followed. First of all, the filmmaker won the Outstanding Director Award at the Sundance Film Festival, an auspicious beginning for a successful cinematic career. Talbot is a White man who built upon his longtime childhood friendship with a Black man, the actor Jimmie Fails, who has the same name as the main character in the script. Co-written by Fails and Talbot, the film's collaborative complexity asks us to speculate on generic type: is it autobiography, biography, existential, part fantasy?
The Last Black Man is a film that encompasses multiple cinematic techniques and unique perspectives with dense, rich-in-information shots that require the viewer to read the frame. The location shooting recalls Ur-film allusions to Hitchcock's virtuosic tour of the city in Vertigo, though the locations are vastly different except for the citing/sighting of the Golden Gate Bridge (Borden, 2012). The film reinforces the history of San Francisco and its transformations through real estate, neighborhoods, and touristic locales.