Review of The Last Picture Show (1971) by Peter C — 24 Apr 2010

All I really knew about The Last Picture Show was its sterling reputation and that it was a coming-of-age story. Both of these held up through the viewing, but what I was unprepared for was how bleak, hopeless, and claustrophobic the movie would feel.

It's true that the movie is a coming-of-age tale about two young men in their senior year of high school, but it's less about their maturation and coming to wisdom and more about them straining and pushing against the boundaries of their small, small town - and, to some degree, coming to terms with them.

Bogdanovich is to be commended for the film; with the stark black-and-white cinematography, a superb cast of actors giving their all, and his very classical style, the film is an unqualified technical success, but it's the way the movie slowly closes in on the characters and the emotional impact of it all that really makes this so powerful.

Like many of the best coming-of-age tales, The Last Picture Show is less about a story and more about a series of events, but the events here are done with a sense of reality and palpable human emotion - be it regret, nostalgia, yearning, loss, desire - that the viewer can't help but be affected.

A truly remarkable film.