The Last Picture Show (1971)

Semi-autobiographical movies tend to have a loose narrative structure. Fellini’s Amercord was a collection of vignettes about various aspects of his childhood. Peter Bogdanovich’s ‘The Last Picture Show’, based on Larry McMurtry’s novel is a similar treatment of small town American lives where you are essentially going nowhere and you are resigned to the boundaries of your town.

Set in the early 1950s, the film explores the lives of Duane Jackson and Sonny Crawford, two young boys graduating from high school and traces various experiences they go through in the next couple of years – sexual, physical and emotional. They frequent the local pool bar run by an old hand, Sam the Lion, who also runs a picture show, which is their window to the world. Completing the cast are Jacy, the prettiest girl in school, her sexually frustrated mother, Lois, the coach’s frustrated wife Ruth and Genevieve, who runs the local diner. The story looks at the interconnections in these lives as they look to each other to ease their frustrations, before coming to terms with, or finding their path in life.

The story is replete with sexual ambivalence. Cheating girlfriends, boyfriends, lovers, wifes – everyone seems to be in on it. McMurtry and Bogdanovich use sex as a liberator that the characters use to ease themselves of their inability to break free from the shackles of opportunities lost. The powerful use of silence is interspersed with crisp dialogue that cuts through with its sharpness. In each character there is a longing, for someone or for a better time in life and in each character there is a resignation that they don’t want to accept.

The acting honors are shared evenly, with Ben Johnson playing Sam stealing the lead as a hardened rancher who has seen the country change to being something different and wants to have nothing to do with it. Cloris Leachman as Ruth delivers a superb performance as a frustrated housewife who cheats on her husband with a much younger man and learns to laugh and live in the process. Both of them earned Oscars for their performances. A young Jeff Bridges as the passionate and explosive Duane and Timothy Bottoms as the reticent and softer Sonny deliver superb performances belying their age. The beautiful Cybill Shepherd in her debut film intoxicates you with her sensual body language and tempting eyes.

‘The Last Picture Show’ is a wonderful look at the transition from one phase of life to another.