writers_reign It's clear that virtually everyone involved with this film both behind and in front of the camera was aspiring to a definite Chekhovian feel but Russian melancholy is the wrong colour for Texas so the best you can give it is 'E' for Effort. It's steeped in melancholy and there's not too much wrong with that but what over-eggs the pudding is the unrelenting bleakness of thr small,, decrepit town, dying before our eyes; Chekhov's Russia was far from opulent but affluence was certainly hinted at and in several cases it featured aristocrats who had fallen on hard times whilst in TLPS only one family is seen as anything like prosperous (Cybille Shepherds') and even Sam The Lion, who owns more or less half the town is seen as more like a vagrant than an entrepreneur. What the movie has in spades is brilliant acting starting with Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson down to Randy Quaid and Sam Bottoms.

gab-14712 I really loved Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show. This was a film that was never on my radar, but then when I heard about the talent behind the film, I knew that I should check it out. Everything about the film is nearly perfect from the spot-on performances to the masterful direction to the technical side of the film. I very much enjoyed how the movie was filmed in black-and-white. It added to the surprising realism the film showed us. The film is about life and how people try to figure out the meaning of their lives in the rather desolate town of Anarene, Texas.There is no denying how depressing the film can be. It's certainly moody and there is no happiness to be found. The lives of everyone is like living in an empty void. People move on from one thing to the next with nothing to look forward too. This is one of the factors that make this movie so powerful. Also adding to the depression of this dying town is the changing times. The town resembles an old Western town way past it's due date. You understand the reasons the tumbleweed rolling through town. The film points out rapidly-evolving urban centers nearby as people flock to these towns to start new lives. But for the people remaining in town, the old-timers fondly remember the happy days while the young people wonder what to do without being so bored. After all, downtown only consists of a diner, the pool hall, and an old-fashioned movie theater all owned by one man known as Sam the Lion.Something that really surprised me is how much of a factor sex plays in the film. Of course, sex is necessary in everyone's lives. But this film really pulls the strings with that sentence. People have sex with each other in the film because there is nothing else to do. They use sex as a way to get through their rather meaningless day. Except for a few cases, there is no sense of eroticism in the sexual activities. There is this one girl named Jacy who uses her looks to seduce every man in town and there is the relationship between our main character Sonny and the older wife of the local gym teacher, Ruth. After Sonny cheats on Ruth with Jacy, there is a very powerful scene between Ruth and Sonny (that involved chucking a coffee pot at Sonny's head) that shows the deep, real feelings that people did have. The feeling that love actually existed inside of these people.It's 1951 in this small, hapless town of Anarene, Texas. The only person who seems to enjoy life is Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), a father figure of almost everyone in town. Life does not hold much of a future in this town for the younger generation. Two kids the film keeps an eye on are the co-captains of their terrible high school football team; Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges). Sonny is more of the sensitive kind of person while Duane is a brash, outgoing man-but they happen to be best friends. Duane also happens to be dating the best-looking girl in town, Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the daughter of an oil baron. Meanwhile, Sonny just broke up with his long-time girlfriend who only were together for the lack of anything to do. Jacy begins a pursuit on her mother's Lois (Ellen Burstyn) to find other men that could give her a future. Meanwhile, Sonny begins an affair with the older Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman). These events show exactly how much of a future is left for the younger generation in Anarene.The film has a very strong cast, whom many would go on to have strong careers. There really is not a single standout because everyone gives an incredible performance each depicting their own sense of sadness. If I had to choose the best performance in the film, I would pick Cloris Leachman as the unhappy wife who begins an affair. That fore-mentioned scene in the argument with Sonny is very powerful. Ben Johnson would be a very close second as Sam the Lion. He's a stern man content with life in the town, but he understands the plight of the young ones. His scene where he takes Sonny out fishing and reminisces on his younger life concerning love actually brought a few tears to my eyes. There is Jeff Bridges, who gave a very steady performance and despite his young age, he already held a commanding presence on screen. Cybill Shepherd was an unrecognizable name at the time, but her sexual turn as Jacy opened up some eyes. Ellen Burstyn likewise as her mother.Also, I have to mention the cinematography, which was used in black-and-white. That gave to the overall realism of the movie. But it is the little things on camera that showed the emptiness of the town. Whether its the tumbleweed, the dust blowing the air, the sad faces of everyone, the broken-down cars, etc. Everything that was shot, in some shape or form, showed what life was in this town.Overall, The Last Picture Show is a bleak, sad movie that is nonetheless a very powerful feature that is masterfully directed by Peter Bogdanovich and brilliantly adapted to the screen by Bogdanovich as well. He gets powerful performances from everyone in the film, and that is a rare feat for a young director. It goes to show that growing up is not all golden and wonderful as some people struggle to live because of the area they reside in. This is surprisingly a very powerful film and one of my favorites from 1971.My Grade: A

harbor21usa This is a great picture based upon a great book.The title of both gets immediately to the heart of things.The book establishes the probability that after Sam the lion & Lois Farrow, Sonny Crawford, of the following generation, is the most intelligent person in Anarene, the fictional Texas small town.For me, the premise of author Larry McMurtry's novel is the source of the greatness of this coming-of-age story. As everyone knows, the title refers to the closing of The Royal, the movie house in downtown Anarene. The location is becoming a ghost town as Mrs. Mosey, the theater's operator, reveals to best buddies Sonny & Duane her intention to shutter the place after one last unspooling of "Red River." It's the night before Duane goes off to fight in Korea.The deeper, subtler meaning of the title refers to the process of growing up mentally, which means seeing beyond Hollywood-fueled fantasies about what life is supposed to be in favor of clear-eyed visions of what is your own real life in actuality.At the center of the story is the trio of Sonny, Duane & Jacy, the girl. There's a late-blooming triangle of competition between the two boys seeking the love of Jacy, their (and everyone else's) dream girl in the flesh. Duane gives everything he's got to the winning of Jacy, whereas Sonny, who never expected to get his chance with her, finally does, but only after falling in love with Ruth Popper, the forty-year-old abandoned wife of the macho but gay high school physical education teacher.Jacy is the villain of the story because she's a very smart schemer who tries, almost diabolically, to realize in the flesh the dreamy scenarios that fill her head in the wake of countless trips to the matinée. Her real life is her enemy because it keeps refusing to conform itself to her Hollywood-laced mental picture of how things are supposed to be. She's the most beautiful girl in town and she's a seductress and yet, actually, she doesn't even like sex, that is, not real sex as sharply distinguished from what she's seen in the movies.Duane, a mostly good-natured guy with strength & athletic prowess, in accordance with the standard movie scenario, figures to be the best match for Jacy. Throughout most of the story, he's got a white-knuckle grip on this dream & his insane jealousy where Jacy's concerned turns him into a violent loose cannon who almost wrecks his bff connection to Sonny.Sonny cherishes the same sort of dreams that animate Jacy & Duane, except that his sharp mind makes him too observant of what's in front of him to be as completely enchanted (and distracted) as the other two. This openness to immediate reality over celluloid dreams delivers him into a real life love relationship with Ruth Popper, a good & vital woman who outperforms Jacy in every important category of womanhood.Picture Jacy & Duane facing the prospect of an unfashionable lover more than twenty years their senior. Neither would consider saying yes because the reality is too far removed from what they've seen on screen. Sonny almost makes the same mistake with Jacy until he sees that her marriage proposal was just a temporary movie scenario playing in her head. Awakened from the picture show in his head, Sonny returns to his lover in real life, Ruth Popper.

George Redding In this 1971 Columbia Pictures Peter Bogdanovich-directed screen version of the novel written by Larry McMurtry, I could not see enough reasons to justify it being nominated for any top award, though I will qualify that to an extent: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and the beautiful and drawing icon Cybil Shepherd were very capable in their individual roles. Also, an excellent job was done with the nostalgia effects, and since I entered the first grade in 1952-the year Jo Stafford's song "You Belong to Me" was one of the number one hits of the year-I did receive an adequate idea of what the early '50's was like in many ways, so I do think this was a great film from that standpoint.It was appropriate that the movie was filmed in black and white, for it indicated a basic fact about movies of that era: most movies were filmed in black and white, and thus there was a scarcity of movies filmed in color at that time. The story line was simple: a small Texas town is dying, and toward the end two boys go to the last picture playing in the local movie theatre.But where was the plot? There basically was none. Concomitantly, where was the substance? Young people go skinny-dipping and have their big fling at sex. The movie was something of a collage, since too many pieces (brief scenes representing different types of persons, different ideas being represented) were simply thrown together. There was no plot present. Therefore, for the Best Picture of the Year award it hardly qualified.