Peter Bogdanovich is yet another ’70s film notable who received an early career boost working with Roger Corman. His initial directing efforts were keyed to his previous incarnation as a film critic: he made documentaries about the work of directors he revered, and tried to become their collaborators. Bogdanovich’s breakthrough feature The Last Picture Show evoked a nostalgia for ‘lost American values’ as portrayed in old movies by John Ford. What’s Up, Doc? remade a Howard Hawks screwball comedy, with Ryan O’Neal playing Cary Grant to Barbra Streisand’s Katherine Hepburn. The result was hilarious. Could old-fashioned Hollywood movies make a comeback?
Critics waiting for Bogdanovich to trip up had to wait some more, as his third picture was also a surprise success. 1973’s Paper Moon doubles down on nostalgia for old movies, recreating even more closely a long-gone style of filmmaking. Again filming in B&W, Bogdanovich’s company went on location to rural Kansas and Missouri. The form revisited is the Deep Depression road picture, as visualized by John Ford.
Film students of the time ‘got’ the connection right away — the show opens with a funeral sequence that is pure Fordian ritual. The great director never made anything quite like Paper Moon, but the film’s setting echoes The Grapes of Wrath, all failing townships and bleak landscapes. The comedy steers toward several endearing pictures Ford made with Will Rogers: Doctor Bull, Judge Priest and Steamboat Round the Bend.
Forget Shirley Temple.
The screenplay by Alvin Sargent ( Julia, Ordinary People) maintains a period feel while introducing modern elements. 1930s characters are brought up to date in endearing ways. The ‘innocent’ little-girl heroine swears and smokes, and can spot a phony a mile away. She schemes like a cute version of the midget Harry Earles in The Unholy Three. Other old-movie ‘types’ are given a comic going-over — the Dapper-Dan egotist, the neurotic floozy. Paper Moon is a bright comedy with performances worthy of a classic movie. Bogdanovich and Sargent spring a surprise in every scene.
Have Model-A Ford, will travel: Itinerant flim-flam man Moses ‘Moze’ Pray (Ryan O’Neal) agrees to deliver orphaned Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal) to distant relatives. Her only possession is the clothes on her back and some keepsakes in a cigar box. Moze discovers that Addie is smart and crafty — a natural asset in his con-games but also too smart of a cookie for him to deceive. They make a great team, fleecing bereaved people fresh from funerals. But Addie is not pleased when Moze puts the Bible Con aside to indulge a fling with a carnival tootsie named Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn), and her maid Imogene (P.J. Johnson).
Things turn more serious when Moze and Addie try their hand at swindling some bootleggers in the ‘dry’ state of Kansas. They tangle with the crooked deputy sheriff Hardin and his brother (both John Hillerman); to obtain a getaway vehicle, Moze must wrassle with a lunkhead named Leroy (Randy Quaid). Just when they think they’ve gotten away clean with a small fortune in cash, disaster strikes.
No mystery here: this is a fun movie with fun people. Alvin Sargent’s dialogue finds an acceptable ’30s argot, but it’s the subtle clash between sharpie Moze and his quick-study acolyte Addie that lights up the screen. Open-road verbal battles haven’t been this smart since Ann Savage savaged Tom Neal in Detour — Addie deftly puts Moze in his place, at times assuming a leadership role.
With his good looks, sympathetic presence and articulate way with dialogue, the much-maligned Ryan O’Neal found himself in numerous stellar roles, for Blake Edwards and Stanley Kubrick. Bogdanovich twice tapped him to play all-purpose exasperated straight men. Even going into Paper Moon, the actor must have known that the accolades would all go to his daughter.
The smart cookie knows what she wants.
Nine year-old Tatum O’Neal of course steals the show with every expression on her precocious face. It’s fun to watch Addie Loggins excel as Moze’s understudy, proving herself a natural at fleecing the rubes. Even more fun are the tricks she pulls, some with Imogene’s connivance, to put the kaibosh on Moze’s affair with Trixie. Tatum all but carries the picture, causing us to wonder what help if any she needed from her father and Bogdanovich. Moze and Addie interact less like and adult and child, and more like the opportunist partners in a Sergio Leone western — swindlers make the best buddies.
Addie shows no mercy to the abrasive but sentimental floozie Trixie Delight, one of Madeline Kahn’s most endearing comic creations. The carnival dame’s attempts to be ladylike against her own nature are consistently hilarious. Trixie’s eventual admisison of respect for Addie as real competition creates a scene of rather touching candor. Depression reality soaks through in the character of Imogene (P.J. Johnson), a girl basically at the mercy of involuntary servitude. In a much worse situation than Addie, with more to lose and even less to gain, Imogene has little choice but to abide Trixie’s abuse and hope for the best.
John Hillerman is appropriately menacing as a crooked lawman. He’s seen too many Moses Pray types to be taken in by any con baloney. The storyline’s best turn is when Addie outfoxes the deputy to rescue the man who might be her father. Rather than go for a big sentimental finish, Bogdanovich and Sargent reaffirm Moze and Addie’s commitment to ther crooked partnership. It’s a mix of Ernst Lubitsch and Sergio Leone. We’ve all had a good laugh and a pleasant emotional ride.
Who needs color?
The early ’70s camera visuals were dominated by perfume advertisements, all zoom lenses and rack-focus blurs. Much of Paper Moon evokes a formalist camera style that lets scenes linger on painterly compositions. The restrained camera, absence of color, and the source music on the soundtrack place us firmly in the dust bowl years. Bogdanovich doesn’t cut just to refresh the screen. A car chase is confected to use one single camera position for several screeching turns, for instance. The framing of some dialogue scenes, such as one in an ice cream parlor, uses real street backgrounds as if they were rear-projections in a vintage studio film. Some wide exteriors frame the horizon as would John Ford. But Bogdanovich uses more close-ups than his mentor, as well as some wide-angle lens shots, something not seen in Ford’s movies.
The film enlists snippets of vintage pop songs in place of a music score. The design look avoids the period oversell seen in the many imitators of Bonnie and Clyde. The Production Designer is Bogdanovich’s full-on collaborator Polly Platt, who never gets enough credit for her major contribution to most every aspect of their movies together. For instance, Platt came up with the idea of costarring the O’Neal father and daughter. She’d later produce or co-produce some truly excellent entertainments: Pretty Baby (Louis Malle), Broadcast News (James L. Brooks), Say Anything (Cameron Crowe) and Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson).
All this talk about style doesn’t detract from Paper Moon’s basic appeal: audiences loved the characters, responding strongly to both the comic exchanges and the heart-tug moments. We’re always concerned that a comeuppance is just around the next corner, and the final act shows us how much we care for this pair of lovable miscreants. 1973 was before the era of franchise sequels, but the finale feels like a setup for ‘Paper Moon II.’ … until we realize that ‘little’ Tatum would likely be inches taller in just a matter of months.
Bogdanovich’s evocation of old John Ford films has more in mind than simple copycat work. When Ford’s Steamboat ‘Round the Bend shows up on a movie marquee early in Paper Moon, it’s not an empty reference. → Ford liked to rib bankers, sheriffs, and crazy revivalists; Steamboat has a looney prophet who wanders on the river shore wearing just a white baptismal robe. His name is The New Moses, and when he’s needed to clear the hero of a murder charge, everyone searches for him. Will Rogers calls to shore from the steamboat:
Will: “Have you seen The New Moses?”
Passerby: “I ain’t seen the OLD Moses!”
In its own way, the irreverence of Moze Pray selling overpriced Bibles to bereaved widows, ties in. Paper Moon does connect up with that innocent old movie.
Innocence can be highly subjective. Paper Moon was rated PG, yet some localities in the Midwest and the South took exception to Addie Pray’s potty mouth, her smoking, and perhaps her chummy friendship with Imogene.
One of my favorite movies of all time. I first saw it on the CBS Late Movie in the 80s. It’s such a convincing evocation of that era. It seems documentary like.
Daddy, I need to use the shithouse.
Alvin Sargent was canny enough to stick to the plot of Joe David Brown’s novel Addie Pray which he sticks to quite closely and well. The characters and relationships are laid out there, and the filmmakers have done a terrific job realizing them. The odd thing to me is that when I saw it in the theater, the print was in sepia, but all remaining prints appear to be only in black and white.