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Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman ... see more see more... , Ellen Burstyn , Antonia Bogdanovich , Samuel Bottoms , Eileen Brennan , Gary Brockette , Loyd Catlett , Barclay Doyle , Jessie Lee Fulton , Clu Gulager , Joye Hash , Joe Heathcock , John Hillerman , Helena Humann , Gordon Hurst , Kimberly Hyde , Randy Quaid , Sharon Taggart , Bill Thurman , Noble Willingham , Frank Marshall , Charlie Seybert , Robert Glenn , Tom Martin , Sam Bottoms , Sharon Ullrick

Produced by Hollywood iconoclast BBS Productions, film critic-turned-director Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film pays homage to Hollywood's classical age as it chronicles generational rites of passage in A... read more read more...narene, a fictional one-horse Texas town. In 1951, high school seniors Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) play football, go to the movies at the Royal Theater, hang out at the pool hall owned by local elder statesman Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), and lust after rich tease Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her film debut). As the year passes, Sonny learns about the pitfalls and compromises of adulthood through an affair with his coach's wife Ruth (Cloris Leachman) and a thwarted elopement with Jacy after she dumps Duane. Following two tragic deaths, and with Duane gone to Korea and Jacy packed off to college in Dallas, Sonny is left behind in Anarene, wise enough to absorb the life lessons of Sam the Lion and Jacy's mother Lois (Ellen Burstyn). He is determined to honor Sam's legacy as the town's conscience, despite a telling sign of incipient communal disintegration: the closing of the Royal Theater after a final showing of Howard Hawks's Red River. Paying tribute to classical Hollywood directors like Hawks and John Ford, Bogdanovich used old-time cinematographer Robert Surtees and shot The Last Picture Show in crisp black-and-white, with a restrained style devoid of the kind of "new wave" techniques (jump cuts, zooms, and jittery hand-held camerawork) used by such contemporaries as Arthur Penn, Robert Altman, Mike Nichols, and Martin Scorsese. As in such Ford films as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Bogdanovich relies on careful visual composition in deep focus to help communicate the regret over the passing of an era. Hailed as one of the best films by a young director since Citizen Kane (1941), The Last Picture Show premiered at the New York Film Festival and went on to become a hit. It was also nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay for Larry McMurtry's and Bogdanovich's adaptation of McMurtry's novel. John Ford stalwart Johnson won Supporting Actor and Leachman won Supporting Actress, beating out their cohorts Bridges and Burstyn. For an audience steeped in movie history and caught up in the chaotic 1971 present, The Last Picture Show presented a nostalgic look backward that was not so much an escape from the present as a coming to terms with what the present had lost. Its 1990 sequel Texasville, in which Bridges and Shepherd played later incarnations of their original characters, was not as successful. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

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88% liked it

11,903 ratings

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44 critics

R, 2 hr. 5 min.

Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich

Release Date: October 22, 1971

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DVD Release Date: November 30, 1999

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Jeff Bridges in The Last Picture Show Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show Jeff Bridges in The Last Picture Show Jacy Farrow Jeff Bridges in The Last Picture Show Ellen Burstyn in The Last Picture Show Jeff Bridges in The Last Picture Show Ellen Burstyn in The Last Picture Show Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show Cybill Shepherd Timothy Bottoms & Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show Timothy Bottoms & Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman at 44th Academy Awards Cloris Leachman with Oscar for The Last Picture Show Ben Johnson with Oscar for The Last Picture Show Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show
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Flixster Reviews (930)

  • LoughnerWasLucid
    December 7, 2011
    LoughnerWasLucid
    From my local magazine review that i wrote:

    "Director Peter Bogdanovich has seen Anarene, Texas, in the cinematic terms of 1951 -- the languorous dissolves, the strong chiaroscuro, the dialogue that starts with bickering and ends with confessional."
  • cosmo313
    August 6, 2011
    cosmo313
    This is, by all accounts, supposed to be Peter Bogdanovich's masterpiece. Since this is the only film of his I've seen, I can't verify that statement for sure, but I did really like it.

    The story is that of a coming of age tale set in small town Texas during the 1950s. The town... read more is a boring and isolated place, where there's really not a whole lot to do, and, even though everyone knows (or seems to know) everyone else's business, there's a lot of iffy stuff going on. The people (especially the youth) are bored, preoccupied with sex, and dying to get the Hell out of town and to some place better ASAP.

    The film was shot like, and has the look of a film from the 1950s. Aside from some of the content (mostly nudity), this could pass for a 1950s film as well. The landscape are suitably bleak, and everything looks simultaneously stark and beautiful thansk to being shot in black and white. The music is made up entirely of popular stuff, almost all country, and that's just fine.

    The performances are areally good. Jeff Bridges is fun to watch, and Cybil Shepherd, despite being an angsty tart (hell, everyone is angsty, dissatisfied, and messed up) gives a decent performance as well, and looks quite stunning (naked or otherwise) in just about every scene. Leachman and Bustyn are also quite good. Bottoms is the lead, and he's good, but it was hard for me to get into him as much as the others.

    For a film about boredom, and the slow rotting effects of it, maybe it's not a surprise that this is also itself a little boring and tedious at times. Not so much so that it truly takes away from things, but it is something to note. Maybe they just need to slightly tighten thigns up here and there. I was watching the Director's Cut though, so maybe that has something to do with it.

    Though this film is not a part of the time period it depicts, it fits in perfectly with the time period it was made. Maybe that's one of the many reasons I liked it. I love that era of cinema, so I'm automatically sorta biased. Despite that though, I still really dig this. It's not something I wanna watch all the time, but it looks great, the style and formal elements are cool and well done, and I can relate in some ways to the characters and story. Hats off.
  • axadntpron
    May 15, 2011
    axadntpron
    A tender yet melancholy coming of age film that looks at the erosion of the American ideal. Set in 1951 and presented in black and white, this film provided viewers with a nostalgic look back into the recent past. A time that was supposed to be wholly unlike the early 1970s of Am... read moreerica, which was still digesting the uncivil wars of the late 1960s and the subsequent final push of the Vietnam war. Yet, rather than provide viewers with an escape, Bogdanovich strips away the veneer of the tranquil & genteel past and shows viewers instead that, as the tagline suggests, "nothing much has changed."
    The film shows that even in the 1950s, when America was held together (albeit forcefully) by the spectre of Communism, people felt lost. Some dealt with it through sexual experimentation, escapism, and even going off to fight in an unpopular war. Bogdanovich brilliantly captures this stigma of a wayward national identity.
    The director also gets brilliant performances out of this young but adroit cast. His camera is seldom invasive and mostly sits back and lets the bucolic pandemonium unfold in the characters eyes. It is a subtle film, but it has a lot to say and says it well. My only regret is that I was not alive to see the premiere of this film.
  • jennifxu
    May 1, 2011
    jennifxu
    Seeing breasts on camera always unsettles me. This is like American Graffiti but in an alternate universe, where everything goes to crap.
  • ythelastman89
    March 15, 2011
    ythelastman89
    When it comes to ensemble teen period movies, you rarely hear of this. Unlike American Graffiti and Dazed & Confused, this is critical of the time period and setting as much as it is being nostalgic about it. The characters are a little bit more odd and unforgiving than normally ... read moreexpected and the story itself is a lot more tied up in sexuality and self identity rather than the classic set-up of parties and drugs. This really accomplished the feeling of a small town where everyone knows each other's business. If you're looking for star studded casts, they don't come any better than this. The cast contains some of the best that the late 70s/early 60s had to offer. Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms are great at playing straight men in a town full of whacko's like Cybill Shephard and Ellen Burstyn as the mother/daughter duo from hell. It's a landmark in the genre and still one of the best.
  • YLOWBSTARDreturns
    January 19, 2011
    YLOWBSTARDreturns
    Probably the quintessential teen film. Classic.
  • fb619846742
    January 2, 2011
    fb619846742
    An appropriately dark, downbeat story concerning a dead-end town in Texas and how the lives of those that reside there intersect in various ways. This thing could have run off the rails, shifted into super melodramatic mode, and become something ultimately distasteful, but due to... read more firm direction by Peter Bogdanovich and a number of stellar performances (especially Cloris Leachman as a lonely housewife), this film stays compelling throughout its many turns. It is not a fun movie to watch per say, but in terms of all those films stripping down the nice American towns and showing the ugly secrets that lie within (like "American Beauty", "The Ice Storm", and "Blue Velvet), this one is the cream of the crop. It has a lot to say about the evolution (or de-evolution) of society, as well as importance of feeling significant in the world despite living in a very remote region. A sure classic, and one that should absolutely be seen by anyone who treasures dramas.
  • ajv2688
    December 26, 2010
    ajv2688
    I should re-watch this movie, I only saw the beginning, and I got bored with it so I didn't see the rest, but I'll give it another try.
  • hunterjt13
    November 27, 2010
    hunterjt13
    "He was sweeping you sons of bitches!"
    If the people of small town Texas are really having this much sex, then I'm hanging out in all the wrong places. And I'm going to show this to any student who tells me that teenage, premarital sex is a new problem; this movie takes place in... read more the 1950s and was made in 1971.
    This is a truly masterful film in every way. From the first frame to the last, I thought, "This is how it's done. This is how exposition is done. This is how sex scenes are done tastefully and artistically. This is how character development is done. This is acting."
    The first shot is a slow fade in, and we see a desolate, dusty town in a slight low angle. Immediately, we understand the mood of the place: it is a town where life has stopped. There are no clocks in the first shot; who needs them? For the rest of the film, we remember the low angle. The film keeps looking up to these characters, even as they deserve it less and less.
    Within the first fifteen minutes, everything is established. We know the precocious town flirt, flawlessly played by Cybill Shepherd in her first film role. We know the sagacious heart and conscience of the film, Sam the Lion, who dispenses criticisms about football and the boys' mistreatment of the town mute with the same hopeless passion. We know that this film is going to be about sexual exploration, as the two male protagonists, Duane and Sonny, move the back of the only movie theater with their girlfriends.
    And why does the film look up to these characters? Because in a town like this - in a town in which they cannot stay and from which they cannot leave - the only real act left to them is to break as many rules as they can. And the film follows their paths from broken, worthless innocence to plain old broken worthlessness and perhaps to some weak redemption.
    I also have to compliment the accuracy of its depictions of Texas. Everything is here: the "y'alls," the over-whelming state pride, the love-hate relationship with the rest of the U.S. in general and nearby cities in particular.
    Overall, this is one of the best films I've seen recently.
  • FireStormStudios
    October 15, 2010
    FireStormStudios
    Elements of this film were 4 stars. It had great sets and acting and music and made me feel like I was transported in that era more than any other film, but I thought the movie as a whole, combining all those good elements just didn't cut it.

    I see what the story was taking m... read moree through and what it wanted to show me, but it left something to be desired at the end and I was sort of glad it was over. Maybe I just didn't get the story, but I found it was too minimalistic for me and I would find hard watching a second time, much like I did the first time.

    I do recommend the film if you would like to see some great, talented actors just getting their start in Hollywood as young adults, but I unfortunately can't recommend this being a good 2 hours of time well spent.

View All The Last Picture Show Reviews

Critic Reviews

Stefan Kanfer
April 27, 2009
Stefan Kanfer, TIME Magazine

Director Peter Bogdanovich has seen Anarene, Texas, in the cinematic terms of 1951 -- the langorous dissolves, the strong chiaroscuro, the dialogue that starts with bickering and ends at confessional. Full Review

Variety Staff
July 18, 2007
Variety Staff, Variety

Notre Dame professor Edward Fischer has said that 'the best films, like the best books, tell how it is to be human under certain circumstances'. Larry McMurtry did a beautiful job of this. Full Review

Dave Kehr
July 18, 2007
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

It's all fairly calculated, though Bogdanovich knows how to cast actors and highlight character turns. Full Review

Roger Ebert
October 23, 2004
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The film is above all an evocation of mood. It is about a town with no reason to exist, and people with no reason to live there. The only hope is in transgression. Full Review

Vincent Canby
May 20, 2003
Vincent Canby, New York Times

Has the effect of a lovely, leisurely, horizontal pan-shot. Full Review

Budd Wilkins
September 28, 2011
Budd Wilkins, Slant Magazine

For the members of the New Hollywood, it was a briefly opened window on revitalized filmmaking and venturesome storytelling. Full Review

Joshua Rothkopf
September 27, 2011
Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

It's meant to make you feel sad for what's lost, but a vitality throbs through it. Full Review

Philip French
April 17, 2011
Philip French, Guardian [UK]

Bogdanovich's masterpiece, it's an elegy for a vanishing America... Full Review

Anthony Quinn
April 15, 2011
Anthony Quinn, Independent

Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 movie is a coming-of-age story, a portrait of small-town Texas, and one of the all-time great American elegies. Full Review

Derek Malcolm
April 15, 2011
Derek Malcolm, This is London

Its portrait of a floundering community is the film's strongest virtue. Full Review

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    • Duane Jackson: I'll see you in a year or two, if I don't get shot.
    • Sonny Crawford: He was sweepin you sons-a-bitches! He was sweepin!
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