#95 - The Last Picture Show (1971) - Peter Bogdanovich

The Last Picture Show takes place in a small town and begins and ends with talk of high school football, just as life begins and ends with talk of high school football in small towns across North America. The town in the movie is a fictional one called Anarene, Texas, but it could be any real-life, wind-blown, dusty town anywhere. It is dry and still drying up, shrivelling up and drying out its inhabitants. New ones grow but they dry out too, usually towards the end of high school, and some stay dry their whole lives, while a few escape to get swallowed in the big city or killed in a war. The movie was released in 1971 but takes place in 1951 when kids got married or went to college or chose one of a few jobs or joined the army. Stay or go, but in a small town even leaving isn’t leaving – when everyone knows everyone they know where they’re going and it’s like not leaving at all.

The movie follows the adventures and misadventures of friends Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (a young Jeff Bridges) as they navigate their last year of high school and the pitfalls of graduation. There isn’t much to do in Anarene except hang out at the pool hall, go to movies, and chase the only eligible girl Jacy (Cybill Shepherd). Boredom seems to suck out ambition and harsh realities of life blow through the town like tumbleweeds, while the boys graduate and move on to nothing at all.

This nothingness is the reward for most high school graduations, when the system spits out graduates and leaves them to their own devices, but it seems to be exaggerated in small towns when there was little to do in the first place. The boys do what teenage boys do with too much time on their hands: they get into mischief, take impromptu road trips, get drunk, and try to have sex with girls – or with older women if girls aren’t available. Sonny has an affair with is coach’s wife, a sympathetic character whose life was dried up years ago. Duane is in love with Jacy who is more concerned with trying to have sex (for the first time) with boys – or with older men if boys aren’t available. She’s naïve but her good looks make her powerful and she wields that power like a sword too big to hold, tipping this way and that. Sonny takes his turn with her when she gets bored. She seems like a way out, like her beauty could take them both far and away, but word travels quickly and their foray is rooted out and snapped off.

The moral center of the town is Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), who owns the diner, the pool hall, and the movie theatre. Sonny’s family situation is never clear, but it is clear that it isn’t good, and Sam is a father figure to Sonny and almost everyone else in town. He’s wise, kind, and thoughtful and seems to know the secret to life. At one point he takes Sonny and another boy out to a pond to fish, even though there’s nothing in the pond but turtles and he doesn’t like to touch or eat fish anyway. Instead of fish, he casts for memories, ruminating on the past, when he used to take a girl there, skinny dipping, riding horses, and being in love. These memories seem to be his secret to keeping alive in the dying town. But as we watch Sonny and Duane fumbling around trying and failing to make such life-sustaining memories, we have little hope for their prospects. And even Sam’s memories only power him for so long as they seem to burn up in an emptying gas tank. Sam the Lion may be successful in Anarene, but he’s still in Anarene.

The movie is shot in black and white as if to emphasize the drabness of the town and life in it. There seems to be no buildings more than a storey high and the whole town looks hunched and huddled against the cold and heat and wind, or like it’s embarrassed to stand up straight and be something more. The soundtrack is made up of radios and jukeboxes actually playing in the scenes – characters change stations and put in money and make selections in the diner. It is all old country music, mostly Hank Williams, twanging about love when love is in the air and loss when sadness and disappointment resurface. The music is another constant in the town where little changes.

Some things do eventually change in town but they’re not for the better – the title gives one of these changes away. It’s not a hopeful movie, but it’s not pessimistic or depressing either. It’s realistic and beautiful in its sadness. Sometimes life loses its colour, not everyone succeeds, and boredom overcomes. And in small towns AM radios continue to narrate life while disappointing high school football teams and the dating lives of teenagers fill the gossip void until the team turns over the next year or someone gets married or dies.