George Redding In this 1971 Columbia Pictures Peter Bogdanovich-directed screen version of the novel written by Larry McMurtry, I could not see enough reasons to justify it being nominated for any top award, though I will qualify that to an extent: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and the beautiful and drawing icon Cybil Shepherd were very capable in their individual roles. Also, an excellent job was done with the nostalgia effects, and since I entered the first grade in 1952-the year Jo Stafford's song "You Belong to Me" was one of the number one hits of the year-I did receive an adequate idea of what the early '50's was like in many ways, so I do think this was a great film from that standpoint.It was appropriate that the movie was filmed in black and white, for it indicated a basic fact about movies of that era: most movies were filmed in black and white, and thus there was a scarcity of movies filmed in color at that time. The story line was simple: a small Texas town is dying, and toward the end two boys go to the last picture playing in the local movie theatre.But where was the plot? There basically was none. Concomitantly, where was the substance? Young people go skinny-dipping and have their big fling at sex. The movie was something of a collage, since too many pieces (brief scenes representing different types of persons, different ideas being represented) were simply thrown together. There was no plot present. Therefore, for the Best Picture of the Year award it hardly qualified.

Prismark10 Film critic and fan of the French New Wave cinema Peter Bogdanovich adapted and directed The Last Picture Show. A film shot in black and white and a soundtrack consisting of songs played on the radio, phonograph and the jukebox.It is about a dying town in the early 1950s Texas at the beginning of the Korean war and television become the increased focus for the viewing habits of the family at home.Bogdanovich inspired by his heroes John Ford and Orson Welles opens the film with the the desert wind blowing through the empty streets of the town of Anarene. A blue collar town in decline where his young have little hope and prospects. All it has to offer is a diner, pool hall and a picture house all owned by Sam the Lion.Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd and Timothy Bottoms are the high school students who ride around in cars, mess about and have inept fumbling in order to have sex. Shepherd is the flirty tease Jacy who leads the guys on but has her eyes set on the rich kid at the next big town. Her ticket to get her out of Anarene.Jeff Bridges as the more cock sure Duane goes out with Jacy, the prettiest girl in town but even he stumbles when he tries to have sex with Jacy who then moves on to Timothy Bottom's Sonny knowing he has been seeing and having a tender relationship with the older and married Ruth Popper the wife of the High School coach.The film despite the stark black and white photography and a cast of veterans that includes Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Clu Gulager, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan is a lot more about the comic misadventures of the young students trying to get laid, a kind of thing we would see a later in the 1970s in movies like Animal House and American Graffiti . Jacy eventually gets satisfaction from an older man on a pool table, the same man who also has a casual dalliance with Jacy's mother.At the end of the movie the picture house does close down, an emblem of the dying town. Jacy has left town to go to college. Duane goes to fight in Korea and Sonny has the pool hall bequeathed to him by Sam the Lion. He also returns to Ruth Popper, a woman he has been mean to as he dropped her like a stone for Jacy. It also gives the film its most tender moment.Despite the harking back to film history this is a daring film made in an era of the counterculture and the abolition of the Hays Code as the film features full frontal nudity and frank exchanges about sex. Just observe the exchanges between Jacy and her mother, who encourages Jacy to be sexually experienced just so she does not get married to someone like Duane for sex and get stuck in a dead end town.

jvance83 I saw this for the first time at least 15 years after its release quite by accident and was very pleasantly surprised. I've never seen a film that struck so many chords of reality.Sam's soliloquy at the tank ("Bein' a dried up old bag of bones, that's what's ridiculous - getting' old.") is as bittersweet an observation of the fruits and futilities of life as anything I have ever seen or read - from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Donne to Dickens - it doesn't get any better.The leads all perform with a subdued expressiveness that leaves one hanging on every word they say, expecting some profundity in every statement. There are a few scenes I could do without and some of the characters are inadequately fleshed out but this is a movie I can watch over and over again, thinking to myself "Man, I wish I had said that!"

videorama-759-859391 I fell in love with this film, like I thought I wouldn't, as having seen Texasville earlier. To put it bluntly, The Last Picture Show is a cinematic, flawless masterpiece, steered by a ensemble of great actors, who come together like one big family as working so well off each other. Even a young Bridges, already showed so much great talent here, as a rebel town kid, Duane, best friends with Bottoms, who is a lighter natured boy. Duane is going out with the hottest girl in this small out of way Texas town (Shepherd) who's never looked hotter as the virginal sweetheart. Her timidity in the skinning dipping scene with a young randy, Randy Quaid, another acting asset as Lester, the town clown, is so cute. Set at the start of the good 'ol seventies, we follow the lives of these late teens, going through the normal changes in their life and passing into manhood, where they're a lot of moments we familiarize with reality. Times are getting tougher, the picture theatre closing down for one thing, where Duane ends going in the army, and an older Cloris Leachman becomes a sort of Mrs Robinson to a young Bottoms, after her husband Sam The Lion (Ben Johnson) passes, which I must say was a turning point. The last goodbye Duane and Sonny gave Sam, before heading down to Mexico before death took hold, made that memory more affecting Johnson's is the most memorable performance, an Oscar richly deserved, where Bridges was still getting started as an actor, as many others. Every actors great, every character leaving a visual impression on ya. The black and white choice for this film, couldn't of cut it more perfectly. The dry arid landscapes, the dusty shots of the town, the cold lake shots, are visually beautiful and memorable, reminding me of my own Northbound towns in the dry Summer heat. None was a more affecting moment than the hit and run of the young dumb sweeper kid, (Sam Bottoms). The friendship between Sonny and him, I really liked. In a mature screenplay, TLPS is just one of those unforgettable films, with unforgettable moments, some amusing, where really what I loved about it, was the characters, steered by such heavyweight performances, which was the real strength that drove this movie. Excellente.