The Last Picture Show

The Last Picture Show is a masterpiece. It is not merely the best American movie of a rather dreary year; it is the most impressive work by a young American director since Citizen Kane.

Clearly, the outstanding performance comes from Cloris Leachman, as the dowdy, pathetic coach's wife, who will settle for love -- any kind of love... She is tremendous, and totally unforgettable.

Bogdanovich, keeping his audience in a suspended state of compassionate amusement, illuminates boredom from within and without and makes it entertaining.

The Last Picture Show is an exceptional and original work, not so much a movie-movie as a film buff's film, an exercise in regret and a reminder of various losses.

It doesn't take very long into this black-and-white film (by the end of its 119 minutes you must surely recognize the potency, the starkness in this tint) to realize that a deeply moving motion picture experience is unfolding.

All the principals deliver striking acting performances. But certainly Johnson's, with his simple, touching speech by the lake recalling the days of glory... deserves a supporting actor Oscar.

If the sequel is a mixed success, The Last Picture Show, particularly in this restored version, holds up like gangbusters. It's truly one of the finest films ever made about small-town America.

The key arc that all three of its young protagonists – Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), and Duane (Jeff Bridges) – go through is the realization that they have the power to hurt other people.

An American classic in every sense.

Because of its loose structure, the even focus on detail, and the remarkably free hand of the director, The Last Picture Show is the brilliant realization of the most important new tendencies in American films.