Peter Bogdanovich's adaptation of Larry McMurty's novel is a beautifully crafted look at life in a Texan backwater town in the 1950s. Featuring the entangled lives and loves of a bunch of teenagers as they come of age, it was one of the first American films to examine the complexity of life in a small town without painting it in shades of a Norman Rockwell white picket fence utopia. The town, once a part of the stable old west is slowly slipping into a new age, and the last picture show of the title represents the end of an era when the town's picture theatre closes down and its former patrons venture off into a life of uncertainty.
The film is slow but evenly paced, featuring a strong cast of unknowns, fledglings and established veterans. Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges are Sonny and Dwayne, two boys who enjoy an elevated status in the town due to their positions on the high school football team. Cybil Shepherd plays a manipulative female who strives for amusement by playing all the boys in the town off each other. Cloris Leachman who won an Oscar gives a sterling performance as the neglected middle aged house wife of the basketball coach, who indulges in an affair with Sonny out of boredom and frustration. The character of Sam the Lion played by Ben Johnson (who also won an Oscar) represents the spirit of traditional western values. His death in the film symbolises the end of an era and the passing of a way of life.
In the true spirit of 70s film making, this film was mature, truthful and innovative, while at the same time it harboured a deep respect for the tradition of American cinema that preceded it. This film is a eulogy to the American Western that pays homage to John Ford's similarly styled The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence'. It examines a world that is caught in turmoil, where the defining values that once guided the people are disappearing and a lost generation is emerging. Bogdanovich and many of the cast members struck career peaks in this film, but sadly many of them were never to recapture that form again.
The film is slow but evenly paced, featuring a strong cast of unknowns, fledglings and established veterans. Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges are Sonny and Dwayne, two boys who enjoy an elevated status in the town due to their positions on the high school football team. Cybil Shepherd plays a manipulative female who strives for amusement by playing all the boys in the town off each other. Cloris Leachman who won an Oscar gives a sterling performance as the neglected middle aged house wife of the basketball coach, who indulges in an affair with Sonny out of boredom and frustration. The character of Sam the Lion played by Ben Johnson (who also won an Oscar) represents the spirit of traditional western values. His death in the film symbolises the end of an era and the passing of a way of life.
In the true spirit of 70s film making, this film was mature, truthful and innovative, while at the same time it harboured a deep respect for the tradition of American cinema that preceded it. This film is a eulogy to the American Western that pays homage to John Ford's similarly styled The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence'. It examines a world that is caught in turmoil, where the defining values that once guided the people are disappearing and a lost generation is emerging. Bogdanovich and many of the cast members struck career peaks in this film, but sadly many of them were never to recapture that form again.