The Last Picture Show (1971)
If George Lucas' American Graffiti (1973) was a night in the life of a group of college graduates then Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show is a year in the life of a small Texan town. Based on Larry McMurtry's novel this is a masterclass in how to create fully rounded characters and then give them real lives to live.
Bogdanovich is to be applauded for filming the piece in stark black and white. It really feels like an example of fifties cinema, ala Huston's The Misfits.
Where The Last Picture Show truly exceeds though is in it's creation of real people living actual lives. Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd are both excellent but it's the roles of veteran western actor Ben Johnson, young Timothy Bottoms and Cloris Leachman that give the film it's true feel of authenticity and make it such a rewarding viewing experience.
Like American Graffiti the film is a nostalgic look back to the fifties and in a way partly a love letter to the films of Howard Hawks, John Ford and so forth. Hawks' Red River is the last movie to be shown in the town's dying picture house and in so doing creates a feeling of true melancholy and sadness as all good things come to an end and lost innocence is all but forgotten.
This is a masterpiece of cinema.
Footnote - I all too briefly met Peter Bogdanovich at a book signing for Who the Hell's In It? in which Bogdanovich essays and interviews Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, James Cagney, Bogart, Bacall, Brando, Chaplin, Audrey Hepburn, Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, John Wayne and more. I haven't read it. I'm waiting for the perfect time and place. It hasn't happened yet in twenty years of owning the book.
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