The Last Picture Show (A- or 3.5/4 stars)
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich (film critic-turned-actor/director), 'The Last Picture Show' pays an eerie homage to Hollywood's classical age as it chronicles the rites of passage for some teens in fictional town in Texas. The time: fall, 1951. The setting: the small, dusty, windblown town of Anarene. Population: 1,131. The mood: there's sexual tension hanging in the air. And the Korean War hangs in the near future. Sonny (an affecting Timothy Bottoms) & Duane (Jeff Bridges) are high school seniors & best buds in the process of growing into manhood.
Sonny & Duane play football, go to the movies at the Royal Theater, eat at the local diner (Eileen Brennan is great as the head waitress), & hang out at the pool hall owned by local elder, Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson). Duane is dating Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the richest & prettiest girl in town who also knows how to use her beauty to her advantage. Between her beauty & her dating Duane ... Sonny always felt that Jacy was out of reach. As the year passes, these 3 characters grow up & come to terms with who they are and where they want to go in life as Sonny has an affair with the melancholy wife (Cloris Leachman) of his coach; and Jacy manipulates both Duane (who becomes her ex) & Sonny for her own personal gain.
Following 2 tragic deaths, & with Duane gone to Korea & Jacy packed off to college in Dallas, Sonny is left behind in Anarene to absorb the life lessons of Sam the Lion & Jacy's mother Lois (stellar Ellen Burstyn). Restless in this town (which shows major signs of communal disintegration - like the closing of the Royas Theater), Sonny must decide if he is to inherit the lives he sees lived by the older residents around him, or if there really is something beyond Anarene's city limits.
Set in the early 1950s, the past is evoked through Robert Surtees' black-&-white cinematography. Director Bogdanovich, with a superb cast, creates a world that is both rooted in its era & yet full of universal themes of growing up, the contradictions of middle-age, & the facades people wear in public. Bogdanovich effectively communicates the regrets that people hold during the passing of an era. To condense the film down to a barebones sentence, I'd say: the boys grow up a little, good times are had (Jacy's nude swimming party), tragedies occur, town secrets are revealed, & another "nothing" decade comes & goes in Anarene. That's sad, isn't it!?
The dust storms, the stillness of the town, the Hank Williams' country music, the subtlety in the performances (Oscar wins/noms abound) all create a distinct mood that takes a hold of you & doesn't let go. Everyone is great, but the most moving performances in the movie are by old John Ford regular Ben Johnson, as Sam the Lion; and Cloris Leachman as the football coach's wife who introduces Sonny to sex. And so, 'The Last Picture Show' takes a nostalgic look at a specific time, place, & set of circumstances that showed people coming to terms with what the present had lost.
Sonny & Duane play football, go to the movies at the Royal Theater, eat at the local diner (Eileen Brennan is great as the head waitress), & hang out at the pool hall owned by local elder, Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson). Duane is dating Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the richest & prettiest girl in town who also knows how to use her beauty to her advantage. Between her beauty & her dating Duane ... Sonny always felt that Jacy was out of reach. As the year passes, these 3 characters grow up & come to terms with who they are and where they want to go in life as Sonny has an affair with the melancholy wife (Cloris Leachman) of his coach; and Jacy manipulates both Duane (who becomes her ex) & Sonny for her own personal gain.
Following 2 tragic deaths, & with Duane gone to Korea & Jacy packed off to college in Dallas, Sonny is left behind in Anarene to absorb the life lessons of Sam the Lion & Jacy's mother Lois (stellar Ellen Burstyn). Restless in this town (which shows major signs of communal disintegration - like the closing of the Royas Theater), Sonny must decide if he is to inherit the lives he sees lived by the older residents around him, or if there really is something beyond Anarene's city limits.
Set in the early 1950s, the past is evoked through Robert Surtees' black-&-white cinematography. Director Bogdanovich, with a superb cast, creates a world that is both rooted in its era & yet full of universal themes of growing up, the contradictions of middle-age, & the facades people wear in public. Bogdanovich effectively communicates the regrets that people hold during the passing of an era. To condense the film down to a barebones sentence, I'd say: the boys grow up a little, good times are had (Jacy's nude swimming party), tragedies occur, town secrets are revealed, & another "nothing" decade comes & goes in Anarene. That's sad, isn't it!?
The dust storms, the stillness of the town, the Hank Williams' country music, the subtlety in the performances (Oscar wins/noms abound) all create a distinct mood that takes a hold of you & doesn't let go. Everyone is great, but the most moving performances in the movie are by old John Ford regular Ben Johnson, as Sam the Lion; and Cloris Leachman as the football coach's wife who introduces Sonny to sex. And so, 'The Last Picture Show' takes a nostalgic look at a specific time, place, & set of circumstances that showed people coming to terms with what the present had lost.