If you’ve seen Mrs. Doubtfire, The Princess Diaries, Milk, and The Birds, your Bay Area movie tour is only beginning.
San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Calistoga, and more have been the backdrop for numerous lesser-known films—some that tell timely stories, others that turn back the clock.
Whether you’re most charmed by verdant vistas or urban landscapes, these movies from the 1940s through the late 2000s will give you a fresh perspective on Northern California.
’The Blue Yonder’ (1985)
‘The Blue Yonder’ director Mark Rosman and young Jonathan (Huckleberry Fox) shared similar feelings growing up.
(Courtesy of Mark Rosman)
Jonathan (George “Huckleberry” Fox) never met his grandfather, Max Knickerbocker (Peter Coyote), who died in 1927 attempting to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in a biplane.
Writer-director Mark Rosman’s own grandfather, also named Max, died when the writer was five. “What made it more touching for me is I didn’t just have a grandfather who I didn’t [get to] spend time with, but he was a grandfather who represented somebody who was similar to me when I was not similar to anyone else in my family,” he says.
He set the story in Virginia but shot the movie in historic Santa Rosa and at a real Sebastopol farmhouse with 1920s furnishings after noticing old cars in driveways as he drove around Sonoma County.
“People in that area love their history and love to hold on to that,” he explains.
As Jonathan and Max fly over scenic hills and ocean waves in this Disney Channel film, the boy manages a Back to the Future-esque change of fate for his beloved grandfather.
// Available on YouTube
‘Olly Olly Oxen Free’ or ‘The Great Balloon Adventure’ (1978)
Katherine Hepburn starred in this 1978 film shot in Calistoga.
(Courtesy of Sanrio)
Olly Olly Oxen Free, also known as The Great Balloon Adventure, was shot in Calistoga and captures the grandeur of the Bay and Wine Country. Katharine Hepburn plays a junk collector named Miss Pudd, who helps two boys, Chris and Alby, celebrate the birthday of Chris’ late grandfather by constructing a hot air balloon in his honor. When the balloon unexpectedly carries Chris and Alby away prematurely, Miss Pudd sets out to rescue them.
Katharine Hepburn’s wonder is heartwarming. “How perfectly mad, how perfectly lovely. I’m in midair. I’m sitting in midair!” she says as she sits on an anchor attached to the balloon before they soar over the water and through the fog to make it home.
// Available on YouTube
‘Nora Prentiss’ (1947)
Nora and Kent’s love affair includes a walk at the Palace of Fine Arts.
(Courtesy of Pixabay/McRonny)
San Francisco sets the stage for Nora Prentiss, a film noir starring Ann Sheridan as the titular nightclub singer and Kent Smith as Dr. Richard Talbot, a married man with two children.
Their love affair begins when he tends to a beautiful woman who has been hit by a car. Nora Prentiss shakes the doctor out of his predictable life, and their romance includes a walk at the Palace of Fine Arts and a drive up to the doctor’s scenic cabin in the mountains. When Talbot fakes his own death to avoid divorce—hardly the only shocking twist—his desperation is their downfall.
// Available on HBO Max
‘Medicine for Melancholy’ (2008)
Micah and Jo’ visit MoAD in Berry Jenkins’ 2008 film.
(Courtesy of Minette Lontsie/Wikimedia)
Medicine for Melancholy spends 24 hours observing the relationship between Jo’ and Micah, San Francisco strangers who think they are onetime lovers. Though Jo’ has a boyfriend, her connection to Micah pulls her closer in this movie where the city is the star.
Micah takes Jo’ to the Museum of the African Diaspora, follows her to Yerba Buena Gardens to ride the carousel, and talks often of race and class in SF, which he both loves and hates.
Filmmaker Barry Jenkins gives scenes a muted hue, almost black and white but with small bits of color, like when scenes of the city briefly turn vibrant while Micah is speaking. “Any man who can find a street corner’s got himself a view,” he says.
// Available on Tubi
‘Bitter Harvest’ (1981)
1981’s ‘Bitter Harvest’ is filmed throughout Sonoma.
(Courtesy of Alexei Komarov/Wikimedia)
This NBC TV movie stars Ron Howard and Tarah Nutter as Ned and Kate De Vries, husband-and-wife dairy farmers in Michigan. California convincingly stood in for Midwest farmland, with scenes filmed in Healdsburg, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and Sonoma.
In 1973, the real Ned De Vries fought to discover what was contaminating and killing his livestock: PBB (polybrominated biphenyl), a chemical that made his baby sick with a horrible rash and caused a neighbor (played by Art Carney in the film) to forget how to plow.
You’ll have to see cows go to that green pasture in the sky, but Nutter and post-Happy Days Howard are compelling as parents and farmers desperate for answers.
// Available on Tubi