The Last Picture Show

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The Last Picture Show

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The Last Picture Show

Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Cybill Shepherd, Eileen Brennan, Ellen Burstyn, Jeff Bridges, Randy Quaid, Sam Bottoms, Sharon Ullrick, Timothy Bottoms

Produced by Hollywood iconoclast BBS Productions, film critic-turned-director Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film pays homage to Hollywood's classical age as it chronicles generational rites of passage in A...( read more  read more... )narene, a fictional one-horse Texas town. In 1951, high school seniors Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) play football, go to the movies at the Royal Theater, hang out at the pool hall owned by local elder statesman Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), and lust after rich tease Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her film debut). As the year passes, Sonny learns about the pitfalls and compromises of adulthood through an affair with his coach's wife Ruth (Cloris Leachman) and a thwarted elopement with Jacy after she dumps Duane. Following two tragic deaths, and with Duane gone to Korea and Jacy packed off to college in Dallas, Sonny is left behind in Anarene, wise enough to absorb the life lessons of Sam the Lion and Jacy's mother Lois (Ellen Burstyn). He is determined to honor Sam's legacy as the town's conscience, despite a telling sign of incipient communal disintegration: the closing of the Royal Theater after a final showing of Howard Hawks's Red River. Paying tribute to classical Hollywood directors like Hawks and John Ford, Bogdanovich used old-time cinematographer Robert Surtees and shot The Last Picture Show in crisp black-and-white, with a restrained style devoid of the kind of new wave techniques (jump cuts, zooms, and jittery hand-held camerawork) used by such contemporaries as Arthur Penn, Robert Altman, Mike Nichols, and Martin Scorsese. As in such Ford films as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Bogdanovich relies on careful visual composition in deep focus to help communicate the regret over the passing of an era. Hailed as one of the best films by a young director since Citizen Kane (1941), The Last Picture Show premiered at the New York Film Festival and went on to become a hit. It was also nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay for Larry McMurtry's and Bogdanovich's adaptation of McMurtry's novel. John Ford stalwart Johnson won Supporting Actor and Leachman won Supporting Actress, beating out their cohorts Bridges and Burstyn. For an audience steeped in movie history and caught up in the chaotic 1971 present, The Last Picture Show presented a nostalgic look backward that was not so much an escape from the present as a coming to terms with what the present had lost. Its 1990 sequel Texasville, in which Bridges and Shepherd played later incarnations of their original characters, was not as successful.~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Id: 10903723

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The Last Picture Show Recent Reviews
  • Saxia
    October 24, 2009
    Saxia
    Although the description might sound boring, this is actually a very nice and fresh (for lack of a better word) movie.
    Not only the young Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges and Tymothy Bottoms are a joy to watch, the 'older' women (Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman) complete it.
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  • kenstachnik
    July 5, 2009
    kenstachnik
    Easily goes toe to toe with Dazed and Confused as the best high school film
  • FangsFirst
    April 8, 2009
    FangsFirst
    My father encouraged me to watch this the last time he, himself, picked it up, but I inherited a distaste for starting in the middle from him and, though I'd only missed five minutes, I skipped on it. I vaguely recall some girl may have been involved in distracting me as well, at...( read more) least in conversational form, but the end result (for whatever reason) was that I didn't end up seeing it long enough to notice anything except Randy Quaid, Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges looking so darn young. I didn't know who Timothy Bottoms was, and I suppose I still don't really. I knew Peter Bogdanovich by name, but I've mostly seen his name, of late, in the film-based writings of Harlan Ellison, decrying Bogdanovich's relation to the auteur theory. Still, I knew who Larry McMurtry was, at least by reputation, even if I'd never read anything of his, nor seen anything based on his work

    Sonny Crawford (Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Bridges) are best friends in the small town of Anarene, TX in 1951, Sonny dating the somewhat homely Charlene Duggs (Sharon Ullrick) and Duane dating the high school looker Jacy Farrow (Shepherd). The town as a whole is annoyed with the boys for their apparent inability to tackle in the last football game they will ever play for their high school, as this is the year of their graduation. Sam the Lion (John Ford standby Ben Johnson) runs all the entertainment in town--a movie house, a poolhall and the café, and otherwise it is an empty, dusty, tiny Texas town, with a population small enough that there are no secrets in town and everyone knows everyone, with Wichita, TX the local "big city" of sorts that is the aim of all those with high-falutin' aspirations or money. A Christmas party sees Lester Marlow (Quaid) begging Jacy to join him at the home of Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette), where prior years' parties have led to skinny dipping. Duane is left dateless as Sonny stumbles into a relationship with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the wife of his coach (Bill Thurman). In their boredom and Duane's frustration, the local boys encourage the mentally handicapped boy Sam takes care of, Billy (Sam Bottoms, brother of Timothy) to lose his virginity to local "woman of ill repute" Jimmie Sue (Helena Humann). And so we watch the slow and awkward aging process of entering society's definition of adulthood for a group of teenagers leaving high school in a small town, and the ways their lives and especially that of Sam affect the town.

    This film won itself two Oscars, one for Johnson and one for Leachman, as well as six other nominations, and it started Bogdanovich on a critically acclaimed career that crashed and burned in only a few short years with dismally received film after dismally received film, rendering his name more familiar than his works. I'm working very hard not to perceive Bogdanovich as a great ego, but I think my perceptions have been coloured pretty thoroughly by all the things I've read and heard, though thankfully I forgot he directed this film until it ended and I saw his credit. Still, I actually did end up finding something missing in this film (which was, for the record, the "definitive director's cut," the only way it has been released on DVD), which let it drag periodically. It was never a drag that left me wanting to wander off and do something else, but enough that I occasionally wanted something to happen, or for some greater clarity of character to occur. Sonny is clear, he's sort of the blank slate protagonist that gives the audience a way into the story, well-meaning but naïve, occasionally meaner than we might like but generally a good person. He doesn't seem to ever deliberately take advantage of anyone though, and is more guilty of failing to do things he should than choosing to actually do things he shouldn't. Duane, too, is pretty clear, acting to contrast with Sonny, interested pretty purely in himself as one of the stronger voices behind the near-abuse of Billy that so offends Sam and fighting too willingly over Jacy without realizing her lack of interest in him.

    The adults and their characters are excellent, without exception. Sam is clear as the guiding and mentoring voice to the boys, or at least Sonny, telling him about his own youth at the "tank" (a fishing hole) and discouraging the behaviour he thinks is wrong, with a strong personality and presence met with a distance in his eyes that fits perfectly with his twinkle-eyed remembrance of years past. Leachman's Oscar, too, was well-deserved, as the perpetually sad housewife who never sees her husband (for reasons that are only subtly hinted at in the movie but apparently near blatant in McMurtry's book) but finds a glimmer of hope in her affair with a boy less than half her age. Lois Farrow (Ellen Burstyn), mother of Jacy, is an interesting mix of the maternal and the competitive when dealing with her daughter. On one hand she attempts to guide her into a comfortable life by encouraging her to pursue money and suggesting that Duane will lead to boredom and monotony, while on the other she is clearly not perfectly satisfied with her own life and eventually even competes over the (physical) affections of a man with her own daughter. That man, incidentally, is Abilene, played by Clu Gulager, who I know very well as Burt Wilson from Return of the Living Dead, but here is a contrast to the manipulative authority figure of that film as a slick, suave near-gigolo for the town of Anarene.

    On the other hand, there's a strange quality to Cybill Shepherd and especially her character which was clarified for me in reading what came after in her career. Jacy as a character is somewhat undefined; at first she defiantly claims to her mother that she is in love with Duane, then suddenly turns into quite the harlot, sleeping with any man she can find, it seems, coldly and selfishly manipulating all of them. It felt I was missing something in her character, especially in what her motivation was for this change. Certainly it was clear that what she was pursuing from Bobby Sheen and Abilene (incidentally, what an odd name--it sounds feminine and is the name of another town in the state!)--she was looking for stability, comfort, affection, love. Yet, her dealings with Duane and Sonny seem oriented only around manipulation. The reasons for her manipulating them seem obscure, no clear motivation coming from any of it. Cybill's limitations seem to be the best explanation here (that or missing scenes omitted from the book). Everyone else, though, seemed to make clear transitions in character, or seemed fleshed out as someone--in the case of Lois--who would naturally flit from emotion to emotion and explanation to explanation.

    There's something to be said, though, of the technical and constructive aspects of the film, a soundtrack composed purely of popular music, but only played naturally within the film, generally a mix of 1950s country music (with a heavy lean toward Hank Williams, Sr.) helps to place the film in an appealing way. A few interesting camera shots, slow zooms and tight close ups in succession during arguments and conversations are very evocative of the exact moods they're attempting to convey. The black and white choice of film (apparently an "of course" decision thanks to Orson Welles) is absolutely perfect, not in aging the film but in giving it the right absence of colour to show us even further that a town with dilapidated paint and well-worn signs is suffering and dying as a town almost, the death of youth and innocence at least at hand for our protagonists. Still, I felt in the end that some trimming (minor, not of whole scenes) would have helped tremendously--perhaps the original cut might improve my opinion, but I didn't feel I was seeing the masterpiece I had been led to believe I would be, though a very, very good film all the same.
  • sononothing
    December 13, 2008
    sononothing
    The Last Picture Show is Peter Bogdonavich's adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel about life in a small, dried up Texas town in the 1950's. Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) is the pulse of the town of Anarene, owning the pool hall, the diner, and the picture show as he bestows fatherl...( read more)y advice on a group of young men who don't seem to have any fathers (none that are of importance enough to appear on screen anyway).

    If Sam is the center of town then Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is the focus of the film as he goes through the trials of becoming a man in a town that should have an obituary written for it on its welcome sign. But then you have Duane (Jeff Bridges) who is set to marry his girlfriend Jacy (Cybil Shepherd)whom he believes he was meant to be with only to lose her and end up losing everything he actually cared about in town. Jacy's life isn't a picnic either as she watches her mother whore it up, encouraging her to do the same.

    This isn't the Donna Reed show or any kind of nostalgic ride back to the 1950's. The Last Picture Show is like the American Grafitti of the poor, middle American kids who could afford the suped up cars that Lucas' creation drove up and down the street all night. These kids had more problems than the adults and no real way to get out of them. The director using black and white only adds to the blah despair of what life was like in this sleepy Texas town. This is a film where you actually feel for all the characters and you just want them to get out of that dreadful town, but it was never meant to be. The Last Picture show is a piece of Americana, painting a picture that the 1950's wasn't the poodle skirt parade that has been depicted adnauseum for all these years.
  • bradwest
    October 18, 2008
    bradwest
    Interesting break out pic for Bogdanovich. More nudity than expected.
  • romy861
    December 4, 2009
    romy861
    Interesting. I liked how it was shot in black and white - gave it a bit more of an edge. Cybill Shepherd was also very impressive in this. I think it is a film you would need to watch a few times as I couldn't quite follow who some of the characters were (or maybe that's just ...( read more)lack of attention span on my part!),
  • Phonex
    December 4, 2009
    Phonex
    1950's at a small American town made in 1971 by PB. Excellent B&W.

    Check : Korean War Time.
  • Sunshineyness
    September 3, 2009
    Sunshineyness
    Last Picture Show is a movie that comes along once in a generation. It's one of those un-intrusive movies that lets the acting speak for itself. You have both the older generation (Burstyn and Leachman especially) and the up and comers of the day (Bridges, Bottoms) all giving the...( read more) performances of their careers in a painfully real and desperate way. This is the west as it was in the 50's- faded and almost gone. You get the idea of a town almost dead from desertion. The Old West is over and soon even the picture house is closing and you really see the strife in all these characters.

    Cybill Shepard really surprises as the young beautiful thing who captures the hearts of all the boys around her and she uses for her own amusement. Bored out of her mind in this crap town she just goes from boy to boy and in a startling scene screws an older man on the pool table in what is perhaps one of the best sex scenes ever on celluloid.
  • hossein13
    August 17, 2009
    hossein13
    The incredible view of a small Texan town and its people. The stories unfold so perfectly and in coordination with the location.
  • BurtHarbinson
    July 19, 2009
    BurtHarbinson
    A good way to judge the content of a film, is how it makes you feel about your own life. Do you feel thankful for your own when it is through? Or do you feel guilty for not taking full advantage of the time you have. Well, it was sort of an experience like that for me.

    So many s...( read more)tories like this have taken place throughout American history, and this one in particular struck me hard, mostly because I grew up in a small town. Thankfully not as small as this town. But I think the appeal of the storyline, is that people relate to their own experiences, and the choices that they made when they were younger, that they now pay for. Life is more or less the choices we make. This story enhances this feeling, as the impact is so much greater in such a small town.

    This is a great movie for anyone to watch though. Lot's of nostalgic memories will no doubt arise, as you think of the first time you made it with someone. Remembering how special it was to you, and remembering that everyone goes through that in life, at one point. The full spectrum appears as the gap is bridged between generations. Advice, the purpose of telling the story, is to take the chance on happiness in life. Don't let it pass you by.

    The Last Picture Show: On a lot of critics "top-lists". A lot of high ratings. A lot of young actors, including Jeff Bridges and Randy Quaid, that all go on to have successful careers. Although it was a very well made movie overall, it does leave one with a dry dull taste in their mouth.
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