The Last Picture Show

America Lost & Found, The BBS Story, Part VII (Conclusion)

1971's THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is stunning, the most quietly stunning film I believe I've ever seen. From opening shot to fade out. I remember so clearly sitting in silence after my first viewing, knowing I'd witnessed something profound and unsettling and all I could do was remain still. Moviegoing can indeed be deemed a meditative and religious experience. A shame I couldn't have seen this film properly, in say a regal old movie palace during its original release in 1971. During a time when the BBS men were in full gear, with this and the other fine movies in this box set I've discussed over the last year and a half.

As I listened to director Peter Bogdanovich's commentary and watched the making-of docs included in Criterion's package of this landmark picture, I completely understood when he stated that he too was so moved by the way actors/brothers Timothy and Sam Bottoms performed a scene near the end that he was paralyzed into silence, nearly moved to tears. After a single, perfect take, he threw his arm around Timothy and the two of them walked quite a distance away from the set with nary a word between them. I felt like I wanted to do likewise with everyone involved with THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

The BBS Box Set is subtitled: "America Lost and Found", and of the 7 films included, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, the crown jewel of this collection, most deservedly earns that description. If there was ever a town that felt lost, dissconnected, and isolated, it's Anarene, Texas. A town that never seems to change; its stillness masking an agonizingly slow death for itself and its inhabitants. A place where Larry McMurtry's novel of the same name first introduced the characters of high school football players and friends Duane (Jeff Bridges, in his screen debut) and Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) as they interact with assorted town folks. There's Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd, also debuting), the town ice princess, her mother Lois (Ellen Burstyn), Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman, who won an Oscar), the school's basketball coach's wife, and Sam (Ben Johnson, also an Oscar winner), who owns all of the town's hangouts and benevolently, quietly lords over everything.

To the uninitiated, it may well all sound like just a honky tonk soap opera. Jacy half-heartedly dates Duane, is convinced to attend a strip swimming party, meets a rich guy she wants to sleep with who, upon finding out she's a virgin, tells her to come back when she isn't. Her attempts with Duane result in his performance anxiety the first go-round. By the time they "get it right" the rich guy has run off to get married. Jacy dumps Duane and later even has sex with her mother's lover (Clu Gulager) atop a pool table. Her behavior is detestable, but she only copies what she sees in her mother.

Meanwhile, Sonny is asked to drive the coach's wife to a doctor's appointment and before long, they are having their own affair, right there in the light of the afternoon in her bedroom. The same cold bed in which she normally retreats into a ball, most likely. Ruth is an unspeakably sad middle-aged woman starved for affection and long resigned to nil self-esteem. She is not beautiful in the conventional ways like the other women of Anarene. But Leachman, usually displaying her gifts for comedy in other roles, perfectly illustrates the very fragile beauty and resolve of Mrs. Popper. Her weathered face and withdrawn body language says more than any dialogue could. There's little joy in their adultery, leading to a devastating, perhaps cathartic, yet strangely peaceful final scene. That is, before we get one last shot of the deserted main drag, of the blowing dust.

The dust symbolizes the passage of time, one of my favorite themes. The events in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW happen over the course of about one year, when some characters graduate high school, some pass away, some leave town, others don't move an inch. The film is an elegy to and yet an indictment of small town life, of isolation from damn near everything. These characters may appear emotionally dead but are full of yearning, of remembering.

The landscape may not change but relationships do, as Sam the Lion sits with Sonny and his brother by the same lake to which he once took a ladyfriend. An illicit afternoon he recalls quietly, yet with an urgency and power that is spellbinding. It is one of my favorite scenes in any movie. I loved hearing Bogdonavich describe its creation, its certainty of earning Mr. Johnson's Academy Award. I will forever be more cognizant of the appearance and disappearance of sunlight in a scene after listening to the director. In real life, too.

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is a perfect film for many reasons. The natural acting. The evocation of time and place. The gorgeous black and white photography, and this film is unthinkable in color (thank Orson Welles, who convinced Bogdonavich to shoot it this way). The palpable feeling of time passing. What I've discovered over the years is also that it manages to feel like a classic film of Hollywood's Golden Age (1930s-early 1960s) without the embarrassing melodrama, laughably authoritarian sounding narrators, and overwrought musical scores that mar even the greatest films of those times. I don't say that to discredit any particular film, mind you, and I realize that every film has to be considered in light of the era in which it was made. But THE LAST PICTURE SHOW needs no such justification or apology. Its lack of any musical score at all is part of the reason it is perfect and timeless. Only the occasional incidental music drifting from someone's car radio or victrola is heard.

The film's title comes from Anarene's sole movie theater, a place to take your date, to dream of other places and pretend perhaps you're like John Wayne in RED RIVER. That Western is the final picture to play in the house, with Sonny and Duane there to watch another piece of history fade away. By then, Sam has died, Jacy's moved away, and Duane himself is about to ship off to military service. Sonny has also stopped visiting Ruth, never even calling her. Until that next to last scene. The wind still blows. Some are left to watch it. This may well be my favorite film ever.