Tuesday, August 01, 2017

Tuesday Forgotten Movie: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW



This film holds up wonderfully. So many characters with depth to them. Even the smallest parts. Yes black and white but so much more than that. This is a scrapheap of a town. A dusty, dirty disappearing piece of long ago. Set in the fifties, it seems to set the standard for what would happen time and time again to towns in the next 75 years. Larry McMurtry sure can tell a tale. Peter Bogdonavich probably never matched the combination of story, setting and character again. There is not a happy end for anyone. Nor hardly a happy moment.

13 comments:

Jeff Meyerson said...

Love it, and the black and white enhances the feel.

Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...

I love this film - it just edges out PAPER MOON as my favourite of his films.

James Reasoner said...

A great film. I'm not much of a McMurtry fan anymore, but he was at the top of his game with this novel. And I can watch Ben Johnson in anything and love what he's doing. Plus I feel like I knew all those people, having grown up in much the same sort of place a few years later. After we saw the movie, a friend and I drove up to Archer City and visited the pool hall and talked to the old man who owned it, who had plenty of stories about those Hollywood people and how they acted when they came into town to film the movie.

pattinase (abbott) said...

This setting is foreign to me as India in some ways. I am sure their behavior was atrocious. A big country like ours makes rooms for so many different experiences.

Rick Robinson said...

Don't think I ever saw it, though I've heard of it, of course.

Charles Gramlich said...

Was just talking about Archer City to a friend of mine the other day. I've been through there. Definitely could watch Ben Johnson in anything

Steve Oerkfitz said...

Bogdanovich's best film. Wish Criterion had released this as a individual film rather than as a box set. The DVD release on Netflix looks terrible. I'm a big McMurty fan. Lonesome Dove is in my top ten.

pattinase (abbott) said...

We saw it on Amazon Prime and it was very grainy. We thought it was directorial choices but maybe it was just a lousy print!

James Reasoner said...

As I recall from the first time I saw on the big screen, the photography is very crisp, not grainy at all. I agree that this is Bogdanovich's best film. I liked PAPER MOON and WHAT'S UP, DOC a great deal when they were new, but they don't hold up as well as I hoped. McMurtry was one of the first authors I encountered who wrote about places where I'd been, and that meant a lot to me.

Cap'n Bob said...

Not forgotten by me. I loved this movie and was very happy to see Ben Johnson win a Best Actor Oscar.

Cap'n Bob said...

Correction, Best Supporting Actor.

Elgin Bleecker said...

Good film. Good acting. Great cast – Ben Johnson was terrific, but so were the women: Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, Eileen Brennan, and of course, Cybill Shepherd.

Don Donovan said...

Outstanding film in every way. Captures the era as well as West Texas itself. Johnson, Burstyn, Leachman are standouts in an otherwise hand-picked cast. Photography, direction, script, all of the highest caliber. Should not be missed.