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The Last Picture Show
"Wouldn't hurt to have a better home town."
"Wouldn't hurt to have a better home town."
I didn’t particularly enjoy this the first time I watched it, but it was a while ago and I couldn’t really remember it in much detail beyond a few scenes. I’m sorry to say I didn’t particularly enjoy it this time either.
Made in the 70s but made to look 20 years older…sometimes it felt like the whole idea was to make it look like a 50s film and then shock you with 70s nudity in a kind of effort to get to get to some kind of grim hidden reality behind 1950s censorship. There was a whole lot of mostly unpleasant sex stuff going on in this film. I don’t know that being graphic about things necessarily makes it more honest than something like, say, Splendour in the Grass. The kissing scenes were weird, why did they all do such weird things with their faces? Was it another attempt to be like 1950s films?
I didn’t much like the look of the film, or the sound, or the pace. There was something a bit oppressive about it which was perhaps intentional, to evoke the bleak and oppressive nature of the town, but stopped me from enjoying it. Just about everyone in this film is unlikable as well, which made it a bit of a slog. Nobody shows the slightest bit of empathy for anyone else (until Sonny near the end with the truck scene and that whole ending felt like one bleak step too far).
It did well in showcasing the hopeless feel of living in a small town without much of a future. It’s mostly about the teenagers, but it was the adults with their disillusionment who provided more of the poignancy. The scene I liked best was Ruth after her hospital appointment, “My god, you don’t know a thing about it.” Basically all the adults talking to the teenagers about life summed up – see also Jacy’s mother telling her to sleep with Duane so she’ll see he isn’t anything special, or Sam the Lion saying marriages are unhappy about 80% of the time. This was the polar opposite of rose-tinted nostalgia and it’s interesting to contrast it to something like American Graffiti, released only a year later.
I thought the picture show would feature more in the film, to be honest, given the title. Interesting choice of Red River as the last picture in The Last Picture Show – since it’s basically a film about people leaving Texas.
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