Kurto's Favorites: "The Last Picture Show"

I have the plain old Columbia Tri-Star Home Video version of The Last Picture Show, because it isn't in letterbox. The film was shot in 1:1.33 (for television), but will crop down to 1:1.85. I sometimes enjoy looking at the film in 1:1.33, as it gives it an entirely different feel. The camera is farther away from everything, but is somehow a little more clear-eyed. When the picture is cropped, it is more "modern" in feel, and somehow, more intimate.

The picture is pretty good, but the sound reveals how primitive sound mixes were back then. It's really obvious (to me, anyway) where they have replaced dialog and inserted foley work. But that's the way they shipped it!

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich / Starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnnson, Cloris Leachman, Cybil Shepherd / BBS Productions, Columbia Pictures / 1971 / 1:1.85

I have just watched The Last Picture Show for the first time in two years. Two hours have never flown by so quickly.

I had been avoiding the task, because I knew that I would have to sit down and write something for the ol' site afterwards. I have this method, you see. I pick a film from my "favorite" list completely at random (each film has its name on a slip of paper in an old tin lunchbox here in my room), I choose one, sit down to watch it, then write these pages.

Writing about The Last Picture Show is rather a lot like having to write about Sunset Boulevard. There are some films that are just so obviously great, that when it comes to sitting down and writing about why Ð it seems kind of impossible.

But a reason why audiences in 1971 were so quick to laud this film and its director (if not its writer Ð that only came later), was that it so completely took you to this small dirtwater Texas town. The reality and candor of it was so unlike anything that had ever been done on the screen. It joined the ranks of a number of films released at the end of 1971 that began to redefine what movies could be.

Who would have thought that the story of several young people coming to grips with sex and their relationships with each other and starring no one in particular would catch on with the audiences of the time? I just ran across an item relating how Bogdanovich, who knew that he had made a good picture, finally breathed a sign of relief and celebrated with champagne after he heard the first box-office reports, indicating that business was very good. I would have too!

Of course this was the very thing that led Bogdanovich along a strange road. He suddenly, with only three features under his belt, Acquired the appearance that as a film creator, he "knew where it was at," and could choose subject matter that audiences were interested in. Because of this, they gave him the keys to the kingdom.

The Last Picture Show turned a page in filmmaking. Nothing really terribly significant happens in it, and yet, right from the beginning, it is an extremely interesting film to watch. Events flow seamlessly from one thing to the next. As the story unfolds, there is a satisfying sense that everything that happens has a cause and an effect. Bogdanovich has since shown us again and again that he is a Hollywood classicist. Could it be that he knew that telling this story in a Hollywood style and being forthright with the subject and pulling no punches, that this would make the film as interesting as it is?

I could head off into a recitation of the plot of the film, and a recap of all the wonderful and horrible things that have happened to all of the people who worked on it, but donÕt think this will do. The Last Picture Show deserves better, if possible. I don't really know anything about how the film came about or what caused the project to be picked up by Burt Schneider and his BBS Productions, who had just scored big with Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970). I don't really know what caused them to do it.

But do it they did. Everything about the film seems well thought out and convincing. From the physical setting of the town (even though there are bare-branched trees during the summer), to the non-professional actors who populate some rather important scenes ("What I want to know is, what was he doing standing out in the middle of the street?"). We have all seen small towns like this. What happens in them?

This is a visit to a small town. But what this visit had to say was that the town was dying, that the kids were going through their initiation into adulthood, and having found that sex and its responsibilities was no bed of roses, they were somewhat ambivalent about adulthood.

Wow. All of that in one film? Yes. A film whose concept of how to take the audience to this town was so right for the subject that the audience of the time went along. And remember that Lucas and his American Graffiti (1973) were only two years away. It too was a nostalgic happy / sad visit to a small town which utilized many of the same techniques as Last Picture Show. But can you see Bogdanovich cooking up something like Star Wars?

It's kind of a shame, really. Bogdanovich idolized the old-guard Hollywood directors. But now the tables are turned. They aren't making 'em like The Last Picture Show anymore, and so now, it's Bogdanovich who can bark at the young folks who want to know "How did you shoot that?" It is his turn to say, "With a camera," as John Ford said before. All you needed once upon a time, was a setting, characters, something that put the characters in conflict with one another or with their setting, and you put everybody through their paces. It helped if you had a theme.

Some film watchers have been singing the praises of Bogdanovich's recent film, The Cat's Meow (2002), saying that it is the return of Peter Bogdanovich. Well now, I don't think I would mind the return of Peter Bogdanovich, would you? Seems like a good idea, doesn't it? A return of Peter Bogdanovich.

But The Cat's Meow is so lacking in theme and purpose, that I left the theatre wondering why anyone other than old movie buffs would want to watch it Ð unless they were entranced with the 20s, or Hollywood, or had some other reason to go along.

A similar problem exists with Warren Beatty's Reds (1981), which is a film I happen to like very much. Just because a director wants you to visit the place of the film doesn't mean that it will resonate with audiences. And as great a film as Reds is, it is mostly forgotten now.

And this is the problem directors face nowadays, the having to overcome the ennui of the audience, and the "so what?" phenomenon. One has to give them something that they will remember and take to their bosom Ð those "pieces of time." It's crazy. What people will remember in a film and what just bounces off them. When you think of the most memorable scenes in recent films, they're hard to compare with say, Ben Johnson's scene where he tells off the gang after Billy's mistreatment. I know it has "Oscar clip" written all over it, but the scene is memorable, because it shows a very approachable authority figure saying to the heroes of the piece, "This is where I draw the line."

In Last Picture, I remember things like the bored kids sitting in John Hillerman's English class. The sweep of the camera over the classroom as he reads from Keats, while Tim Bottom's character looks out the window to a pair of dogs copulating on the lawn; the great scenes with Ben Johnson. The scene with Bottoms and Cloris Leachman, who are lovers, when he asks, "What would your husband do if he found us?" She leans back and says, "Shoot us, probably. He's always looking for an excuse to use his deer rifle." All of the material at the Christmas dance and the naked swim party. Boy, it's ridiculous to even try to mention all of the scenes that are memorable. I love the conclusion of the arrest of the Joe Bob (Bark Doyle) character after he has been caught trying to molest a small girl. The adults are so wrapped up with attacking him and throwing him in the squadcar, that the girl, completely unharmed, skips along to keep up with the crowd. They don't make a big deal of it. It is staged completely right. It wouldn't surprise me if it was something that was improvised and stuck in. As Wilder said, "Make the subtleties obvious."

There are many, many other great things and fabulous tricks to swipe in this film. I love the introduction of Ellen Burstyn's character, the way the car she's riding in pulls into shot and she's just there, ready to lay down the law with her daughter Ð just love that. We all remember the scene where she reminisces about Sam the Lion, but do any of us realize that the scene is a full three minutes long? It is. Just try putting something like THAT in a movie nowadays.

There are tons of scenes that are cut off abruptly. Music that shuts off suddenly. Unorthodox cutting combined with Hollywood smooth. It's an interesting mixture of styles. McMurtry has a fantastic ear for the quirky things his characters say. Bogdanovich's city boy sense of Texas along with his penchant for simple staging and irony, reminds me of the wonderful things that can happen when a director is shooting something that is outside of his or her regular experience. Just take a look at Mask (1985).

I am really wandering all over the map here, but I guess that is how it has to be. Picture Show is a totally unique look at a very intriguing spot, a place that none of us will ever be able to actually visit. It is a drawing of a place and the dynamics that go into it, that is done with extraordinary skill and sharp detail. It will only get more and more interesting as time washes over it.

6.01.02

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