The Last Picture Show. 1971. USA. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Screenplay by Larry McMurtry, Bogdanovich, based on McMurtry’s novel. With Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson. 35mm. 118 min.
In Larry McMurtry’s novel, about the tired and worn residents of a small town in Texas in the early 1950s, Bogdanovich found an ideal early vehicle for what became his signature tone of mournful melancholy. Bogdanovich presents the often-desperate romantic comings and goings of teenagers Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), Duane (Jeff Bridges), and Jacy (Cybill Shepherd) with romantic wistfulness, and he links the principal adult characters, especially town patriarch Sam the Lion (played by former John Ford stock company player Ben Johnson, who won an Oscar), with the spirit of a weathered, withering Old West already past its sell-by date. The film climaxes with Sonny and Duane taking in a screening of Howard Hawks’s Red River, a film whose mythic vision of Texas bears little relationship to the series of fleeting affairs, petty gossiping, and everyday tragedies depicted here. Even in this, his second feature film, Bogdanovich was less of a nostalgist than his reputation suggested. –Peter Tonguette