The Last Picture Show

It’s the beginning of the 1950s. Sonny and Duane are in their last year of high school. They dream about girls and about the blurry future, kill time in old Billy’s arcade, but the inevitable necessity to part ways catches up with them. Particularly when the dilapidated Texas town’s local cinema – the place their boyish memories are tied to – shuts down and shows its last flick, Hawks’ western Red River (1948). The next day Duane is mustered off to Korea, and “big” history finds its way into the sleepy smalltown… In spite of the fact that Bogdanovich’s film (based on a novel by Larry McMurtry, known today, above all, as co-author of the script for the film adaptation of Annie Proulx’s story Brokeback Mountain, 2005) preconceives the theme of American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) in a number of ways, it harks back to classic Hollywood with its starkly nostalgic black-and-white footage, a drama reminiscent of the Hawks film mentioned above. This wistful movie-buff tale about the moment that innocence turns painfully and awkwardly into experience won Oscars for the Best Supporting roles of Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson. Around 20 years later, Bogdanovich made a loose adaptation called Texasville (1990). (source: catalogue Karlovy Vary IFF)