The Last Picture Show

"Could be worse"

"You could say that just about anything I reckon"

Peter Bogdanovich caused a stir back in 1970 when he wrote and directed this bittersweet coming-of-age tale that peeks under the veneer of America's idyllic 1950s midwest to reveal recognisable lives of pain, heartache, broken promises and squandered hopes and dreams. Featuring breakout roles from Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd and Randy Quaid as well as Oscar-winning turns from then-underrated character actors Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson, The Last Picture Show is rightfully held in high esteem as one of the defining films of America's golden age of 70s filmmaking. It could arguably be said that every Oscar-baiting drama about American suburbia or small town life made since (EG. Little Children, Revolutionary Road, Blue Sky) has been walking in this film's footsteps.



Bogdanovich takes a dusty old football-obsessed town in the midwest and uses it to examine the changing times of the early 1950s alongside the changing lives of the town's teenagers as they come of age. It's a familiar world of bored kids looking for excitement, lonely neglected women, and listless men eager for sex but forthcoming with little else. Bottoms plays Sonny, the audience's identification figure, a naive everyman who hooks up with an older, married woman (Cloris Leachman) and learns some hard lessons about thoughtlessness and doing the right thing. Bridges and Shepherd play less sympathetic figures... they're essentially the doomed future of the town, Shepherd is destined to become a troublemaking floozy like her mother, and Bridges is the kind of hotheaded roughneck that keeps the town's spirit of callousness alive.



Shepherd has a particularly interesting character arc as Jacy. We watch her journey from prissy good girl to sexualised cat; a young woman learning that her looks are her only currency in this dead-end town. Other memorable characters include Lester (Randy Quaid), a would-be sophisticate hamstrung by his oafish small-town idiosyncracies, and Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), the town's only apparent tie to a past where heroic morality once stood tall. Johnson in particular is a perfect piece of casting, he represents America and the Old West, and comes across as a sensitive, less polished version of John Wayne.





I think The Last Picture Show might actually be the first use of black and white cinematography as a intentional technique for evoking a past era. Bogdanovich was (and still is) a well-known film buff and historian, and you can see this in the kind of film he's made here. Essentially, this film is about what the past was like vs. what we think or wish it was like. Through the young leads he captures that nostalgic feeling of youth... our youth is that time when the world is still fresh and hasn't lost its shine or that sense of endless possibility. There's a point in our teen years when we become aware of just how open the world around us is, and then shortly after that (for some of us) we grow disallusioned by the restrictive reality of things - we see the tarnish that renders everything dull, or the way our environment or upbringing blocks certain opportunities. This film is about that. We like to idealise earlier eras like the 1950s but, as The Last Picture Show depicts, they're every bit as full of sadness and tragedy as our modern times. For an example in the context of the film, see the withdrawn religious kid who turns out to be a pedophile!



The use of black and white is also quite effective because it lulls the viewer into a sense of nostalgic security before taking us to the drive-in where a girl casually takes off her bra. It comes as quite a shock due to the context and execution, with Bogdanovich combining his love for classic Hollywood with European neorealist sensibilities. The impact of The Last Picture Show in 1970 was mostly due to it's unexploitative use of increased sex and nudity. It's not exactly gratuitous but it was extensive and frank enough to be groundbreaking for mainstream America at the time. Bogdanovich never had another critical hit quite like The Last Picture Show, he slid away into partial obscurity as film trends moved further and further away from his own interests in subverting and celebrating the filmstyles of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. I dare say that everything he ever wanted to say as a director was said in The Last Picture Show. It's Bogdanovich the film fan writ large, and the film stands as a highly influential piece of 1970s filmmaking.



DIRECTOR: Peter Bogdanovich

WRITER/SOURCE: Peter Bogdanovich and Larry McMutry. Based on a novel by Larry McMutry.

KEY ACTORS: Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Eilleen Brennan, Randy Quaid, Clu Gulager, Sam Bottoms



RELATED:

- The semi-autobiographical novel The Last Picture Show by Larry McMutry.

- Bogdanovich reunited most of the cast for a poorly-recieved sequel in 1990, Texasville.

- Nostalgia aint what it used to be! See also American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, The Myth of the American Sleepover, Revolutionary Road and Grease

- Coming of age in another time, but from an Australian perspective: The Year My Voice Broke.



AWARDS

Academy Awards - won Best Supporting Actor (Ben Johnson) and Best Supporting Actress (Cloris Leachman). Nominated for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Suporting Actor (Jeff Bridges), Best Supporting Actress (Ellen Burstyn) and Best Cinematography.

BAFTAs - won Best Supporting Actor (Johnson), Best Supporting Actress (Leachman) and Best Screenplay. Nominated for Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress (Eileen Brennan).

Golden Globes - won Best Supporting Actor (Johnson). Nominated for Best Film (Drama), Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Leachman), Best Supporting Actress (Ellen Burstyn) and Most Promising Newcomer (Cybill Shepherd).