Bogdanovich’s best-known work and one of New Hollywood’s most elegiac films, this is a deeply felt early ‘50s portrait of a dusty old Texan town fading away along with its downtrodden characters.

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Peter Bogdanovich had a rather mixed career as a filmmaker, but there is no doubt that his greatest achievement was The Last Picture Show.  It wasn’t just his best-known work but also one of New Hollywood’s key offerings from the early ‘70s. 

Perhaps part of its continuing legacy today comes from the fact that it is an uncommonly elegiac work, one that in hindsight became a sentimental bridge between a dying Old Hollywood (marked by the likes of Ford, Hawks, Capra, etc.) and a burgeoning new phase of artistic expression (as chronicled by the emergence of Coppola, Scorsese, De Palma, etc.). 

Thus, it is befitting that its title suggests the end of an era, and is visually represented by a lonely cinema taking her last few breaths.  It is also the only form of entertainment in this part of town, apart from pool tables and Christmas parties. 

A dusty place with the occasional tumbleweed rolling across the tarmac, this Texan town is also about to be irreversibly altered by the winds of change. 

“Just remember, beautiful, everything gets old if you do it often enough.”

The Last Picture Show works as a coming-of-age film about the romantic and sexual (rather frank for its time) exploits of several high schoolers who are about to graduate.  They don’t seem to be aware that these would be the best days of their lives.  So with their youthful naivety—and fervour—they try to connect with whoever is emotionally (or sexually) available. 

The cast gives impeccable performances, including a young and suave Jeff Bridges and Cybill ‘Ice Queen’ Shepherd in her acting debut. 

Shot in beautiful (or some might say, bleak) black-and-white, The Last Picture Show benefits the most from Bogdanovich’s firm hand on the film’s harsh but wistful tone, which treats its downtrodden characters as victims of their own circumstances (many do not have the wherewithal to leave for greener pastures and thus become stuck in generational cycles of mediocrity). 

Yet, the intimate connections, when some of these characters do find them, become marks of existential grace.  Those are the only cobwebs of human experience and memory that they can hold onto until one more fatal gush of wind pushes them across the edge into oblivion.

Grade: A

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