the last picture show review

film by Petar Bogdanovic (1971)

There is no romanticism in growing up in Small Town America. Every pop-country song is lying to you. This is exponentially worse if you’re fat or brown or poor or simply weird, as most of my adolescent friends were. The oppressions are sharper, the boredom more onerous. There’s this feeling of constant surveillance, like any public display of enjoying life will get you thrown in County. This was probably why we spent so much time at the dollar theater.

Review by James Carneiro | January 26, 2025

San Marcos, repressive-impoverished-increasingly gentrified as it was, has nothing on the sepia-toned misery of Anarene. It’s a town Hank Hill would warn Bobby about traveling to. The town’s sole entertainment is a trifecta of sorts, a pool hall-movie house-greasy spoon operating under the benevolence of one Sam the Lion, the town’s only decent man. These are the town’s only Sacred Spaces, where every character is entitled to some level of comfort and respect. There is a dearth of respect in Anarene. 

 

The characters we identify with are the poor ones, who listen to shitbucket country and consider Perry Cuomo a little too ethnic. This is ostensibly “a high school film,” and yes, a great deal of our ensemble is 17 or 18. But when you grow up so intensely poor, you have to grow up incredibly fast. You don’t have the luxury of the typical High School Film Cliches — cliques, prom, etc. — which all boil down to the same thing: enforced adolescence, infantilization due to socioeconomic forces you don’t really comprehend (the parents of middle class kids will move Heaven and Earth to ensure their children don’t comprehend things). Most of these kids were functionally adults by 14. They weren’t necessarily happy about it, it’s just the situation they were born into. 

 

This film’s finest asset is the wry, half-grinning screenplay by way of Polly Platt and Larry McMurtry. It does this wonderful thing where we’re able to chuckle at the foibles of these Hayseed Sad Sacks, but it doesn’t feel mean because there’s ingrained wisdom in everyone’s eyes, mutually acknowledged discomfort in the awkward silences. This film has so many short little tableaus — come to think of it, this film is nothing but tableaux— where something or other is learned. No fireworks n’ theatrics, just unsentimental empathy. Those last two words are the best encapsulation I have for this film.

The Last Picture Show (1971) by Peter Bogdanovic
The main cast, left to right: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd.

I’d like to think I wasn’t as stupid as the teenage male leads in this film. They are dimensions removed from the psychopathy on display in “Porky’s” (1981), and often relatable because their fumbling attempts at forming romantic/sexual attachments come from a place of honesty. They are, I think, fundamentally decent people who simply weren’t socialized to empathize with “gals.” They literally don’t have the language or neural pathways for it. I don’t think any dude in this film has a platonic female friend, a relationship seemingly condemned by The City Fathers. I could see myself in primordial Jeff Bridges and soulful doofus Timothy Bottoms at times. I have been 19 and psychotically horny, but also deeply scared and wracked with frustration because I:

 

A) Have placed a huge amount of self-worth in Being Able To Do This Right;

 

B) Am terrified I’m going to disappoint Her;

 

C) Thus, she will no longer want to loudly riff on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer with me to the consternation of everyone around us at the Dollar Rama Discount Theater.

 

That frustration is palpable here, it’s almost a sort of mind virus. I like to think my generation got…better at this sort of thing, though your mileage may very. (If you’re still not sure what I’m on about here, just listen to The Replacements’ Let It Be. Paul Westerberg has better hair and cleverer wordplay!) 

The Last Picture Show (1971) by Peter Bogdanovic
Anarene, Texas - a town with no reason to exist.

Cybill Shepard is great, obviously, but the female leads I found the most potent were in their forties: Eileen Brennan’s Hash Slinging Sardonic Philosopher, and Ellen Burstyn’s Acid Tongued Elder Sister Stateswoman. These two performances operate at gale force. I was disappointed the requisite tumbleweeds didn’t fly by whenever they yelled. They have the advantage of time. Life holds no illusions for them, so they try to hack the best deal The System can grant them. One is dependent on Doug Dimmadome, the other wage labor. Maybe they’ll never escape this town, but at the very least you have to respect them. Respect, it’s a precious commodity in Small Town America.

 

My two favorite sequences were the ones which threatened to spill over into syrupy melodrama, but in actuality contain more power because they stick with Unsentimental Empathy. Cybil Shepard goes to a rich kid function where everyone swims nude (say what you will about Anarene’s ruling class, they’re absolutely prepared for the 70’s). Shepard has to strip in front of everyone on the diving board. She pretty clearly does not want to do this, but I think the blow is (somewhat) softened due to everyone else having “normal” — i.e. Not Hollywood — bodies. It’s anticlimactic because she slips, falls in the water, some people laugh. They’re assholes, but they’re too ridiculous to have any actual power. Weirdly, I don’t think she’s robbed of dignity. 

There’s a similar hazing where a developmentally disabled boy is coerced into losing his virginity to a portly sex worker. To the bullies, this is doubly funny — the kid is inherently ridiculous because he’s disabled, and the hooker is ridiculous because she’s fat. What, if anything, could be funnier than him fucking her? A lazy comedic layup is easily upended. The portly sex worker goes through with the act, but is righteously pissed off the entire time. She retains dignity by being acid-tongued, funny, refusing to be the butt of the joke. The bullies can’t chortle; she’s just better at riffing. 

 

Significantly less dignity is retained for the disabled kid. A Grave Violation has taken place. When the bullies try to dump the traumatized kid off like so much garbage, Sam the Lion dresses them down, evicts them from his Sacred Spaces. Cast out of Paradise. They have to smell their shame. Very few people stand up for the subaltern in Small Town America. 

 

The Last Picture Show contains many tableaux. Not all of them are great, but I couldn’t bring myself to say “they should’ve excised this one.” Much like Sam the Lion’s lakeside recollection of loving (and fumbling) The Coolest Woman in Town, these moments just feel necessary.

james carneiro image

Author

Reviewed and published by James Carneiro. Initially caught the film bug while cruising for used copies of Bergman flicks/bootleg concert footage at Disc Replay. These days, he’ll review quite anything, though he is partial to Italian neorealism, American underground film, and whoever is using cinema as a method of interrogating power structures. Feel free to follow him on Letterboxd.

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