Looking back at The Last Picture Show

Incredibly enough I had never see Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film The Last Picture Show until now - and maybe that's to my advantage; it was enlightening to look at the film some 45 years after its making and to see it as a triple-retro piece: it was made in 1971 but set in 1951 and using film techniques (b/w cinema, somewhat stagey dialog, ambitious plotting) perhaps more typical of the 40s or even the 30s. Amazingly, the film holds up very well and we can still see its influence today on many other films that have examined the frustrations, challenges, and social codes of small-town life and the rage of young people who feel both loyal to and stultified by their surroundings: think about the recent, excellent Nebraska, which also used b/w cinematography, though in wide-screen format and with high-def photographic precision, rather than the rather grainy cinematography that Bogdanovich sought. As noted, the film is rich in plot and has several strong lead characters - and supporting characters, notably Chloris Leachman as a sorrowful middle-aged woman ignored by her husband (there are strong hints that he, the high-school coach, is a homosexual) who turns to a young man in town for fulfillment and affection, with the obvious unhappy consequences. There's a lot of sorrow, and humor as well - all the men in town razzing the football players about their horrible performance on the field (this is a an anti-Friday Night Lights, in a sense - the town is much more isolated and lonely and the mood far, far darker). The femme fatale, played well by Cybil Sheppard in the debut, is a force who destroys everything she touches in town; the lead character, Timothy Bottoms, is sweet, weak, and trapped: what will he become? Well, we know the answer, sort of, because Larry McMurtry, who wrote the source novel, did at least one sequel - in fact, it was awful and I would ignore it. He was great on this film, and I think the film helped make his career as a writer - which culminated w/ his masterpiece, Lonesome Dove. It's a shame that the film didn't lead to better things for Bogdanovich - who was really smart and brave to pick this topic and to make such a powerful and heartfelt film from this bleak though emotionally rich material. My impression, from the documentary on the DVD, is that PB was extremely difficult to work w/, which may in part explain the relative dullness of the rest of his movie career (though he's done a lot of TV work and played a great in peripheral role in The Sopranos).