Peter Bogdanovich’s crowning achievement gets the 4K nod from Criterion, with additional Blu-ray extras plus the entire belated sequel Texasville — in its color theatrical version or a B&W director’s revision. The oil boom has passed, and Anarene, Texas is dying out. Its isolated, bored teenagers are eager to test the rules. Bogdanovich faithfully transfers Larry McMurtry’s small-town drama to the screen with a score of terrific characterizations. Newcomers Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn and Randy Quaid shine, while deserving favorites Eileen Brennan, Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson get the best roles of their careers.

The Last Picture Show 4K
+ Texasville
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 549
1971 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 126 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 14, 2023 / 39.95
Starring: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, Clu Gulager, Sam Bottoms, Sharon Taggart, Randy Quaid, Joe Heathcock, John Hillerman, Noble Willingham, Frank Marshall.
Cinematography: Robert Surtees
Production Designer: Polly Platt
Art Director: Walter Scott Herndon
Film Editor: Donn Cambern
Costume Design: Polly Platt
Screenplay by Larry Mc Murtry and Peter Bogdanovich based on the novel by Larry McMurtry
Executive Producer Bert Schneider
Produced by Stephen J. Friedman
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich

Film critic-turned director Peter Bogdanovich pulled off the same career metamorphosis as the French New Wave upstarts, but without trashing the directors that had gone before him. If anything Bogdanovich celebrated and idolized the greats too much, as he made very good movies that replicated the style and form of John Ford and Howard Hawks. Peter B.’s first big-scale movie in the Hollywood current was a smash in all respects. It authenticated a star career or two (mainly that of Jeff Bridges) and introduced several notable personalities (Timothy Bottoms, Randy Quaid, Cybill Shepherd). The show gave a huge boost to overlooked actresses (Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan) and allowed the most deserving to score an acting Oscar (Cloris Leachman). The western-set drama also gained credibility with a thoughtful performance from an authentic western legend, Ben Johnson, who won a well-deserved Oscar of his own.

Bogdanovich’s first master stroke was choosing Larry McMurtry’s novel The Last Picture Show. It’s a real proving ground for a director who wants to make a big commercial & critical splash. McMurtry’s viewpoint on the decline of ‘the West’ hadn’t been seen since Martin Ritt’s caustic modern western Hud (1963), in which Paul Newman played the Lowest Heel West of the Pecos. Bogdanovich enjoyed more serendipity with the film’s timeing. Sam Peckinpah had pegged the revisionist ‘End of the Old West’ trend with the previous year’s The Wild Bunch. McMurtry’s Anarene is where the Real West went to die — a dried-up oil town just big enough to have a high school, but no reason for the kids to stick around when they graduate. Most of the adults are stuck there; few of the kids know the hard lives their parents led, in the depression and through the war.

In other words, Bogdanovich chose a story with real meat on the bone, not a genre exercise he could direct in his sleep. He must have rushed to the independent producers BBS after their Easy Rider struck gold. Last Picture Show got a solid deal going at Columbia, with full location shooting. And the Powers that Be even assented when Bogdanovich wanted to film in B&W. Monochrome had been all but dead for a full five years, and convincing Columbia to take that route must have been a big hurdle. It helped — when Last Picture Show premiered late in 1971 at the first Los Angeles Film Exposition (FILMEX), it was greeted as more than ‘just another movie’.

Dried-up Anarene, Texas threatens to blow away with each succeeding dust storm. Its restless young people see little future in the place, with its half-block of Main Street all but shut down. The prospects are so dim that the teens can’t evade the shame of their losing football team. The listless Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), the unruly Duane (Jeff Bridges) and the frustrated beauty Jacy (Cybill Shepherd) are primed for all manner of trouble. The boredom is such that the only activity in town that’s not illegal – an ugly prank is played on Sonny’s mentally challenged brother Billy (Sam Bottoms) — are the heavy petting opportunities offered by the tiny movie emporium run by old Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson). Sam embodies what’s left of the Old Ways, and likes to run feel-good westerns. He’s also the one voice that the kids respect, even when their moral compass falls short of his values.

Urged by her mother Lois (Ellen Burstyn) to think big and go places, Jacy gets talked into a strip game at a rich boy’s pool party. She then uses her allure to convince Sonny to elope with her, an effort that doesn’t get very far but awards her with a virtual badge of daring. Quiet and soulful Sonny begins an affair with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the neglected and lonely wife of the football coach. Ruth’s need is such that the afternoon arrangement gets emotionally out of control. All know that the status quo in Anarene won’t last, but the future is a blank. Will Lois succeed in arranging something better for the man-bait Jacy?  A draft call-up for the Korean War is going to have an effect as well. Waitress Genevieve (Eileen Brennan) can’t shield Sam the Lion from what everyone knows will have to happen — the movie house can’t stay open much longer.

Bogdanovich strikes something good with The Last Picture Show. Compared to the busy cattle town in Hud, Anarene is little more than a forgotten truck stop, a place where you don’t want your car to break down. The new ratings system allows Bogdanovich to show the squalid edges of Larry McMurtry’s memoir — the main themes in this Nowheresville are sex and boredom. Sonny can’t even be bothered to wash, it appears. Some of the adults indulge in sneak-around games — cowboy oil worker Abilene (Clu Gulager) who has a few things going with married women. Duane and his friends spend weekend nights in the picture show balcony mauling local girls so accustomed to the drill that they chew gum while removing their brassieres. Primed for something better, Jacy taunts her admirers but finds herself intimidated at that unsupervised indoor pool party. Violating taboos gives her a feeling of power, accomplishment.

It all adds up to a bleak statement on what happens to traditional American values when the economics don’t cooperate — mainly a lot of disillusion and heartbreak. That McMurtry wrote a sequel, filmed by Bogdanovich twenty years later, makes Last Picture into the first half of an Edna Ferber-like multigenerational epic — with the ‘greatness’ sorely lacking.

The Oscar nominations totaled an impressive eight, with two wins for supporting actors. The well-liked John Ford discovery Ben Johnson’s win was a triumph of natural-man honesty over formal acting ability. After 20 years of mostly TV work, the Oscar was a personal vocation for favorite Cloris Leachman, who had bridged the gap between glamour girl and excellent character work.

The contributors most deserving of Oscar nods were cameraman Robert Surtees for his control of the bleak, flat B&W landscape, and Production Designer & Costume Designer Polly Platt. As Bogdanovich’s wife and partner, Ms. Platt’s creative contribution was crucial to all aspects of the show, way beyond just freeing Peter B. to concentrate on the actors.

Heralded as the best of the ‘New Hollywood,’ The Last Picture Show would seem to point to big possibilities, and horizons beyond movies about drugs and motorcycles. For a few years Bogdanovich took a serious role in the effort to reshape the film biz in positive ways.

Seeing the show again, with all those familiar faces, takes us back to UCLA. Peter Bogdanovich brought all of his films to screen when they were in first release. He addressed us in friendly terms about Picture Show and Paper Moon, carrying on a real discussion. He didn’t play the star, name-drop Orson Welles, or promote his record album with Cybill Shepherd. We knew Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman well but most everyone else in the show seemed a new face. Many proceeded to serious careers, or at least a legit claim to fame and accomplishment. We found out later that Eileen Brennan and Ellen Burstyn already had long TV careers; the determined Ms. Burstyn was so intent on getting things into gear that she had just been to Paris to film a movie from a Henry Miller book, with Rip Torn.

Watching the Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray of The Last Picture Show 4K is indistinguishable from a vintage theatrical experience, what with Ultra HD’s sharpness and enhanced contrast range. Robert Surtees’ gray-on-gray days and inky black nights always feel authentic. What Bogdanovich captured here wasn’t a carbon copy of a John Ford look, but a fine interpretation of Larry McMurtry’s Texan decay. The release has a relatively low Criterion number because it came out in a 2010 Blu-ray edition with several other features produced by the company BBS.

Two additional Blu-rays are in the set. The first carries an HD pass with the main feature, and several extras. The list is below. We see the stars doing their best to be sociable, when the only statement they need to make is in the film itself. Peter B.’s reflections on the movie seem chosen to speak to legacy as much as the subject at hand. We quickly cued up François Truffaut’s little talk (1972) about the new freedom of the screen in the New Hollywood. The positive example he comes up with is Last Picture Show.

The third disc has a pleasant surprise, the 1990 feature Texasville, which wasn’t a big hit. The color theatrical cut is present but the top menu choice is a director’s cut, about a reel longer and rendered in B&W. As sequels go it’s quite good, with committed repeat performances from Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Cloris Leachman, Randy Quaid and Eileen Brennan. It’s from McMurtry’s own sequel, and as Bogdanovich says the book seems to have been inspired by the personalities of the stars. The sequel has a lighter tone befitting the often absurd events overtaking the now sprawling town of Anarene. The actors have aged twenty years but the sequel shifts them 30 years later, in Reagan’s first term. Anarene seems to have been overtaken by a plague of bed-hopping infidelities. The storyline meanders through a lot of character tangles, leading up to a Centennial celebration, a device used much the same way as in James Jones’ Some Came Running.

Jeff Bridges carries the film with a mature, reasoned performance. The highlight of the movie is the floating set of arguments / romantic gestures between Duane, Shepherd’s Jacy and his unhappy wife, an outstanding peformance from Annie Potts. There may be too many stabs at ‘important’ sentimental moments but the end result is way on the plus side — Duane and Jacy retaking their places on a homecoming float hits the spot. The only times Bogdanovich pushes too hard is when he strains for Fordian moments. Having Jacy sing “Shall We Gather at the River” is an eye-roller.

The movie really works well in B&W — it has more visual continuity with the original. We only sampled the theatrical version, and in color it seemed too much like a Movie of the Week. One of the extras is an excerpt from George Hickenlooper’s film Picture This – The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas, which we reviewed back in 2002.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Last Picture Show 4K
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Additional feature film Texasville (1990), in both the original theatrical version and a black-and-white director’s cut
2 audio commentaries, with director Peter Bogdanovich, Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall
3 making-of documentaries
Screen tests, location footage
Introduction to Texasville with Bogdanovich, Shepherd, and Jeff Bridges
Excerpts from a 1972 TV interview with filmmaker François Truffaut
Trailers
20-page pamphlet with an essay by Graham Fuller and a Peter Tonguette interview with Bogdanovich.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: December 14, 2023
(7044show)

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