According to Peter Bogdanovich, he first spotted The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry on a paperback rack at a drugstore and was immediately caught and intrigued by the title. My own experience with his film adaptation is similar: I’ve long known about it without having seen it, but am drawn to that title. It is very evocative, The Last Picture Show –suggestive of some great dramatic end, a wistful nostalgia for a bygone era and the power of movies themselves. But for that last point, the movie does embody these themes, albeit in a quieter way than I expected –being a grounded chronicle of life for young men in small town Texas in the 1950s.
It’s filmed in black and white so that it resembles a movie shot during that time but is replete with things that never would have flown in 1950s Hollywood, specifically nudity, profanity, allusions to drug use, and very frank depictions of sex. The effect of this is that it strips back the conventional rosy image of that decade still predominant by the early 70s, and reframes the values of the nostalgia towards it. Bogdanovich’s impression of the era in which he too was a youth is not a Leave it to Beaver fantasy of middle-class contentment but rather a labyrinth of unchecked horniness, confused emotions, and evasions of personal responsibility. In fact, it is these more honest, rough edges that he means to reminisce about and in a rather neutral fashion. Unlike the wholly good vibes of something like George Lucas’ American Graffiti two years later, The Last Picture Show is more modest and pensive, good and bad nostalgia mixed in equal measure –and Bogdanovich knows that it is subjective. Because youth, his argument seems to be, don’t change all that much from one generation to the next. This is illustrated by an older figure in the town called Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) sharing memories of young love and longing with the teenagers who are going through much the same experiences; and on a meta level how similar the values and attitudes of these young people are with the youth culture of the late 60s and 70s.
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Representing that demographic are the hotshot young leads played by Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges, with Cybill Shepherd making her debut appearance as well. Whether it can be attributed to their performances or Bogdanovich’s direction, all three embody a kind of fusion of 50s and 70s style –and wouldn’t be out of place in either decade. Shepherd’s character Jacy, as the girlfriend of Bridges’ Duane, is the most hard-done by the movies’ point of view though; conversely portrayed as both a vain social climber -chasing after one boy for his wealth and status, and an inconsiderate “maneater” -trading in various sexual relationships just to fill a void. In fairness, there’s a hint of a sympathetic naivety to her actions -that she doesn’t know what she wants and makes drastic choices as a result. But the prevailing notion in spite of Shepherd’s best efforts is still the cliché -she betrays both Duane and Sonny (Bottoms) in classic vamp fashion and has learned relatively little over the course of her story.
Far more interesting is the affair between Sonny and the sad, jilted coaches’ wife Ruth, played by Cloris Leachman. She won one of two performing Oscars for this movie (alongside Johnson for a pair of scenes and a single monologue that he acts the hell out of), and it’s entirely deserved. As much as the age difference is fraught and her mental health is concerning, there’s something right and honest to their relationship, probably due to the vulnerabilities they’re both able to expose. She’s who he comes back to in the end when everything seems to be going wrong: Jacy dumped him, Duane left to fight in Korea, a local disabled boy is carelessly killed while simply sweeping the street, and even the movie house is shutting down. Amidst all this it is Ruth who Sonny sees as his rock -very curious for someone who doesn’t betray much emotion.
The Last Picture Show looks fantastic, its’ colourless photography allows for a depth of detail to the places and faces that occupy this declining environment. The town Anarene is based on a ghost town, which I’m sure is what Bogdanovich saw this place becoming. And yet it is that duet of the gritty with the romance that makes this movie stand out, when so many nostalgic-50s movies that followed in its’ wake would choose one or the other. One of its’ last scenes is simply of two men enjoying a movie together, Red River as it happens, in a quaint small-town cinema. Perhaps experiences like that last picture show make the rougher aspects of young adulthood in that time easier to digest.
Criterion Recommendation: The Handmaiden (2016)
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It’s Pride Month and Park Chan-wook just debuted a new film at Cannes (for which he won their Best Director award), so the timing is appropriate to look at his 2016 erotic thriller The Handmaiden. Based on a British novel but reoriented for early 20th century Korea, it is the story of a plot to marry and then steal the inheritance of a Japanese heiress that then spirals into a series of cons and double-crossings. The main players are Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee), her controlling uncle (Cho Jin-woong), the grifter himself posing as a Count (Ha Jung-woo), and his accomplice Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri), the titular handmaiden. As this conspiracy plays out, the real drive of the film is in the sexual tension between the repressed Sook-hee and the sexually conditioned Hideko, both groomed by the men in their lives and both desperate for liberation. Park directs with his usual high intensity and a strong mastery over his particular visual craft. And both Kims are astounding in their performances, which demand a lot of them both psychologically and physically. Altogether it is one of the most exciting and satisfying of any LGBTQ movie, worthy of the greater scrutiny the Criterion stamp would provide.
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