OVP: The Last Picture Show (1971)

Film: The Last Picture Show (1971)
Stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Oscar History: 8 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-Jeff Bridges, Supporting Actor-Ben Johnson*, Supporting Actress-Cloris Leachman*, Supporting Actress-Ellen Burstyn, Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I will admit that American Graffiti is not a film that wears well in the old memory.  It's one of those movies I saw in my youth and might admittedly gain a new perspective on being older, but as a result of my apathy when The Last Picture Show started out, I was a little nervous as those opening scenes, with Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges both struggling to "get some" off of their girlfriends both recalled that George Lucas coming-of-age landmark.  However, as the film progressed I saw other things start to pop up, namely legitimate adults, and we got to see how the inconsequential started to overtake people's lives in a lonely, dusty town.  It's the sort of tale that feels authentic not only in its time, but in my experience to small towns and the way that slower-moving attitudes shift the way you run your life and expect things out of it, and it's a melancholy look at America's past, but also very uncomfortably at its present.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in the 1950's, 1951/52 to be exact, in a desolate small town in Texas.  Here we see three young people: Sonny (Bottoms), Duane (Bridges), and Jacy (Shepherd) exploring the town, the latter two in a lusty but unconsummated relationship, while the former has just broken up with his girlfriend of a year for not having sex with him.  The film unfolds with Sonny as our lead protagonist, slipping throughout the town and exposing new layers of every character in the movie.  The film rarely leaves his or Jacy's purview, and a result we get only snippets of the remaining characters, but they are almost all powerful.  The film continues in this way, with very few things of meaning or consequence coming about, resulting in the few actions that do matter (Jacy and Duane breaking up, Ben Johnson's Sam the Lion dying, Sonny starting an affair with the older-and-married Ruth Popper, played by Cloris Leachman) really sink in for the audience.  It's a sharp metaphor of how there are only a few things over time that tend to sink in and make an impression in all walks of life, but particularly in a small town, where all activities and actions remain on a loop, perpetually the same.

The film received four Oscar nominations for acting, an incredible feat duplicated by very few films, and all of them were in supporting roles (the only time in AMPAS history where a film got four acting nominations and none of them were in the lead roles).  It's sort of a weird hodgepodge of nominated performances in it.  The most significant role of the bunch is Jeff Bridges, who is in most of the movie, and actually could have been marketed as a lead without too much trouble.  Bridges was incredibly young when this film was made (a mere 21), and does a great job of making Duane seem likable when his actions aren't.  There's a weird juxtaposition with Jacy, whom Cybill Shepherd makes almost unbearably cruel and vain, and Duane, who is in reality many of these things.  He knows he's handsome, he knows he got the best girl, and he acts like a child whenever he doesn't get his way.  Bridges could have been far more curt, but he has such an amiable demeanor you are caught off-guard when Duane is cruel to Sonny late in the film, even though he's always been like this.

The remaining actors are helped by three powerhouse scenes that carry them, since they are all supporting in the truest sense of the word.  Bridges lost his first Oscar bid to legendary Western star Ben Johnson, who at just under ten minutes, gives the shortest performance ever to win Best Supporting Actor.  The character gets one memorable soliloquy right before his untimely death, where he opines for the plains of his youth and the girl that got away (whom we later learn, in her big scene, is Ellen Burstyn's Lois), and he indeed sells the hell out of this scene, though one wonders if he wasn't a legendary character actor if he would have actually taken the trophy.  Less wondering can be said for Cloris Leachman, most famous now for her work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and her erratic appearances on Dancing with the Stars, but she nails her short turn as the neglected wife of a gay gym teacher (I love how Bogdanovich got that across in one very quick scene while skirting around the censors of that time), having so many crying fits about her love affair with young Sonny and selling her breakdown scene toward the end of the film to the rafters.  Compared with Leachman Ellen Burstyn can't really compete, frequently staying surface-level and not giving much more than the appearance of someone who is still beautiful, and is knowing of her daughter's ways.  I am kind of surprised that she and Eileen Brennan (who have weirdly similar names-perhaps the Academy confused them?) didn't switch places in terms of nominations, as Brennan is better at doing more with less and is more memorable as a waitress whose life will always be behind a lunch counter.

The film is at its best when it gives something harsh and bitter, like Jacy's destruction of almost everything she touches (first Duane's life, then Sonny's), showing that actions have consequences, and few of them are great.  We see how Sam the Lion spends his life wishing he'd made a different decision with the love of his life, or the permanence of a bad decision in Ruth's marriage to a man who has no sexual interest in her.  The film becomes a bit dry when it focuses too much on the inner-workings of children and trying to grow up-it's far more fascinating when it shows how society and the world end up treating teenagers as adults far earlier than it should, watching as Duane, Jacy, and Sonny put permanent scars on their happiness and futures before they are mature enough to handle these circumstances.  This harshness is helped by the cinematography, which was also nominated (and thankfully put in black-and-white, which helps with the nostalgic pull), as the film is obsessed with eye-level camera work and that makes the few vast expanse scenes all the more impactful.

All-in-all, I have to say I was impressed though the masterpiece that I was expecting was maybe not quite there.  The movie is one of the strongest depictions of young life I have seen, but it would have been even better if it had found slightly more compelling leads and focused more on the permanent ennui of everyone in this town, just sort of being there and not really living.  It's a very strong film though, and I highly recommend seeing it if it's one of those classics that (like me) you have been putting off catching.