The Last Picture Show (1971)
Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich.
Written by: Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich based on the
novel by McMurty.
Starring: Timothy Bottoms (Sonny Crawford), Jeff Bridges (Duane
Jackson), Cybill Shepherd (Jacy Farrow), Ben Johnson (Sam the Lion), Cloris
Leachman (Ruth Popper), Ellen Burstyn (Lois Farrow), Eileen Brennan (Genevieve),
Clu Gulager (Abilene), Sam Bottoms (Billy), Sharon Ullrick (Charlene Duggs), Randy
Quaid (Lester Marlow), Joe Heathcock (Sheriff), Bill Thurman (Coach Popper), Barc
Doyle (Joe Bob Blanton), Jessie Lee Fulton (Miss Mosey), Gary Brockette (Bobby
Sheen), Helena Humann (Jimmie Sue), Loyd Catlett (Leroy), Robert Glenn (Gene
Farrow).
It’s been nearly 50 years since The Last Picture
Show (1971) came out, and it was set 20 years earlier than that, in 1951. It’s
odd than to see it evoke the 1950s – which still seems to hold some romanticism
in America, as a simpler time, where factory jobs were plentiful, where you
knew your neighbors and watched out for them, where everyone had a home, a
white picket fence and 2.5 children. It’s an era that Republicans in particular
want to return to – even though hardly anyone alive now was alive then, and if
they were, they were too young to really remember it. The Last Picture Show is
a film that lays to waste the myth of that era – it’s set in the small town of
Anarene, Texas – a Ghost Town in West Texas – and even in 1951, the town was
dead, or at least dying. The heart of the town is Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson, in
a richly deserved Oscar winning performance) – and there is a scene about a
third of the way through the movie that is undeniably the reason he won the
Oscar. He is talking to a couple of teenage boys – Sonny (Timothy Bottoms, who
is the closest thing to a main character this ensemble film has) and Billy (Sam
Bottoms), who has something wrong with him – he doesn’t speak but smiles a lot.
Sam remembers a time, some 20 years before, when he was out at this same tank
he’s with the boys, with a younger woman he was very much in love with, but who
was already married, and likely just looking for some fun as her marriage was
already loveless and dull (we see it now, and it’s only gotten worse). It is a
nostalgic scene for a time that once was, and never will be again. And then,
Sam the Lion dies, and with him the town pretty much does to – although the
people in it gamely just keep trudging through.
The Last Picture Show really is a feel bad movie in
many ways. It was directed by Peter Bogdanovich (easily his best film) – and it
evokes the style of his idols – Orson Welles and John Ford – although
Bogdanovich knew damn well at the time that their time had passed, and so the
shots and style of those masters evoke a poignancy in looking back. It is a
film about how there is nothing to do in this small town – Sam owns the Pool
Hall, the diner and the movie theater – and without them, there would be
nothing else. Still, more and more people aren’t even going there anymore –
they stay at home, watching TV, wasting their lives away.
The film is mainly about the town’s teenagers – for
whom there is nothing to do in town, which is probably why they’re all out
having sex more than anything else. But there is very little joy in any of that
sex. This is a movie with a lot of sex in it, but deliberately, there is very
little eroticism in it. Duane and Jacy (Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd) are
the “it” couple at high school – the football star and the town beauty – but
even though Duane is in love with Jacy, she is already starting the eye the
exit door. Part of that is probably her mother, Louis (Ellen Burstyn) – a
realist if ever there was one, who advises her to just sleep with Duane now so
she’ll realize how much isn’t there, and then she can get herself a rich man –
like Lois did. Jacy will use sex throughout the movie – she has her eyes set on
one of those rich boys, who doesn’t like virgins – and she’ll use Duane to get
what she wants, and when that doesn’t help, she’ll keep on using one person
after another – including her mother’s own lover, and eventually Sonny – all in
an effort to anger her parents (Lois doesn’t much seem to care – she knows none
of it will last). If there is a flaw in the movie, it’s that I think it’s way
too hard on Jacy – and teenage girls, since there isn’t a character who acts as
a counterpoint to Jacy and her cynicism.
What little tenderness is in the movie, oddly,
involves Sonny and Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman – another Oscar winning role) –
the wife of the football coach, who seems so desperately lonely and sad, and
will eventually start sleeping with Sonny. There is tenderness there – love
there, in its way, which helps counteract some of the cynicism there. Of course,
Sonny being an idiot teenage boy, doesn’t quite see it that way – which leads
to the concluding scene of the movie (which is undoubtedly why Leachman won the
Oscar) – where she finally expresses anger and resentment towards him, before
once again, cradling him.
The Last Picture Show sees this dead-end town
clearly – and also sees the myths that it was raised with. Ford’s Wagon Master
(featuring Johnson) is one of the films playing on the screen, and the last
show of the title is Hawks’ Red River – movies with heroism, and romanticism of
the Old West – one that was dead by then, but sustains people in their minds.
You see where these people are going to end up if they stay here – lonely,
desperate, miserable. Jacy may then be the smartest character – she gets the
hell out and doesn’t seem to be looking back. For Sonny and Duane, they’ll end
up like their parents – who we barely see in the film – playing out the string,
lost in a time and place that is over, even if they don’t realize it. This is
one of the best of all American films.
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