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Film

The Last Picture Show

Thursday, May 16, 2013

7 p.m.

Additional Info

Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show, 1971, 126 min., black and white, 35mm

Image: Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show, 1971; courtesy Photofest

Set in lonely Anarene, Texas in 1951, Bogdanovich’s evocative portrait of a dying West follows three teens as they navigate late adolescence in the bleak landscape of their dustbowl hometown. Duane (Jeff Bridges) and Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) are best friends, high school seniors, and co-captains of the hapless football team; Jacy (Cybill Shepherd) is Anarene’s prettiest and wealthiest girl, desperate for attention and impatient for adulthood. The three experience love, jealousy, loss, and loneliness as they brush up against the aging lost souls of their atrophying town. As graduation approaches, people stop attending the town’s second-run movie house, and the time comes for Anarene’s last picture show. The closure of the theater seems also to mark the closure of childhood for Sonny, Duane, and Jacy — and perhaps the crumbling of American values for Bogdanovich.