The Last Picture Show

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Sometimes I like to write a post about a film discussed at a movie class at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. I hadn’t seen this film since it was initially released so I thought I would revisit it by attending a recent viewing and analysis at the theater. The Last Picture Show (1971), adapted from the novel of the same name, was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and takes place from November, 1951 to October, 1952 in the fictional Texas town of Anarene (the name sounds like Abilene in the 1948 western, Red River), which was based on author Larry McMurtry’s home town of Archer City, where the movie was shot. This period in American history is a scary time since the end of WWII introduced the specter of a mushroom cloud hanging over civilization as the fear of a nuclear confrontation existed in the background of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Pessimism replaced optimism for the future. The technology of television drew people away from the communal gathering to watch movies at a theater to the seclusion of the living room.

The closest literary equivalents to this tale are the valley of ashes depicted in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegiac The Great Gatsby, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, both works commenting on the spiritual barrenness of the human soul in modern times. Bogdanovich wanted to show the town in decay, bleak and colorless, and his houseguest, the great Orson Welles, encouraged the director to shoot the movie in black and white, which was unheard of at the time of its making, since Hollywood had been filming its feature films in color. The opening of the film has a shot of the town’s movie theater, the Royal, its name conjuring up images of the past majesty of classic cinema. That image is followed by a pan to the left to reveal a main street that looks like a ghost town, with howling wind the only sound heard, as if people have been blown off the face of the earth. The town’s population is so small that the cafe waitress, Genevieve (Eileen Brennan) says at one point, “A person can’t sneeze in this town without somebody offering them a handkerchief.”

Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) is trying to get his dilapidated truck to start. He keeps pulling on the choke knob as the engine sounds like an old man coughing. Our instructor pointed out that the effect was to make the audience feel that the whole place was choking on the dust that seemed to be replacing the town. The sound could signify the community’s death rattle. Sonny and his high school friend, Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) are on the football team, and they just played the last game of the season. They were badly beaten by their opponents, and the fact that it is the last game and they failed so miserably lends to the atmosphere of defeat that permeates the area. Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson, in a Best Supporting Actor Oscar win for his brief performance, the shortest ever to win the award) says, “This is what I get for betting on my hometown ball team. I ought’a have better sense.” To which oil driller Abilene (Clu Gulager) comments, “Wouldn’t hurt to have a better hometown.” This exchange is darkly funny, but it also shows the awareness of how decrepit the location has become. Even understanding that dire reality, Sam, financially and spiritually, continues to invest in the town, despite the odds. He owns the cafe, the theater, and the pool hall. (There is a bit of foreshadowing as to what will happen to Sonny when, in the pool hall, Abilene tells Sonny to be careful with a pool cue so as not to poke out Abilene’s eye). Sam shows old movies, many of them western classics made by John Ford and Howard Hawks, which depict heroic versions of real-life cowboys who now can only exist, like ghosts, on the theater’s screen.

Sonny and Duane share the truck and live in a boarding house, instead of with their parents, suggesting how the family units here are falling apart. The boys take their girlfriends to Sam’s movie theater, with Duane and Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd) arriving in the truck a bit later, and using the theater to neck. (The movie being shown is Father of the Bride, an idealized version of a marriage and parent-child relationship that ironically contrasts with what happens to Jacy later). Sonny is attracted to Jacy, wanting to share more than just the truck, the football experience, and the place where they live with Duane. Sonny now takes his turn using the truck and parks with his girlfriend, Charlene (Sharon Taggart). Their interaction is anything but romantic. With no foreplay, she mechanically takes off her top and Sonny fondles her breasts as they kiss. Sonny wants to have intercourse, but she seems to think that she is keeping her chaste reputation despite her sexual behavior. She also is angry with Sonny because he hasn’t remembered the one-year anniversary of when they began dating. Her being upset about an anniversary is only a hollow pretense of a bygone romantic era, like a false building front on a movie lot. Preoccupied with his thoughts about Jacy, and not feeling any fulfillment, emotionally or physically with Charlene, he abruptly and inconsiderately breaks off the relationship, a foreshadowing of how he acts later.

As our class instructor stated in his handout, the characters from the younger and older generations “try to find solace and escape from boredom in lost dreams, drinking, temporary and manipulative sexual encounters” and “the local movie theater’s shows.” Roger Ebert, who considered the movie the best film of 1971, said the inhabitants of Anarene seem to have lost their “reason to exist,” and their “only hope is in transgression.” Maybe many of the characters are sexually promiscuous and adulterous because subconsciously they are revolting against the choices they made and the cards that fate has dealt them. We do have a sort of sexual liberation theme here on the part of the women in that characters such as Lois and Ruth seek physical fulfillment for themselves instead of adopting the traditional female role of satisfying male needs.

Coach Popper (Bill Thurman), at a basketball practice session, tells Sonny that he can get him excused from a class if he will drive his wife, Ruth (Cloris Leachman, winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this role) to a doctor appointment. He agrees, but when he shows up to give Ruth the ride, she is disappointed that her husband delegated the job to a student. Ruth is an introvert, but she can’t hide her longstanding emotional pain any longer, and on the way home she starts to cry. She invites Sonny into her home for some soda, and he tries to awkwardly console her, although he appears out of his maturity depth as to what to do to help.

In contrast to the sensitivity between a child and parent in Father of the Bride shown at the movie house, Jacy has a cynical encounter with her mother, Lois (Ellen Burstyn). She is married to a man that has struck it rich in the oil industry, but that hasn’t made her life happy, and Lois doesn’t expect that her daughter will turn out any better than she did. She drinks a great deal, and is having an extramarital affair with Abilene (his name, recalling Red River, indicates how the noble cowboy of western mythology has declined into this womanizing driller who plunders the land, and who does his drilling in places other than the oil fields). She tells Jacy not to marry Duane, but just go to bed with him. Lois says then her daughter will realize that “there is nothing magic about it.” Lois’s jaded view on her current life is devoid of any real connection to another person, and she sees life as a tease heading to a big letdown.

Perhaps because of the negative view on life that her mother dispenses to Jacy, the young woman accepts an invitation from Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid), a rich kid, like herself, to go to a nude swimming party at the house of a wealthy boy, Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette). Jacy most likely wants to transcend the limitations on life that her mother predicted for her and seeks excitement, acceptance, and maybe adulation from others. She tries to gain being the center of attention by being sexually manipulative. The film is not shy about displaying nudity, and in this pool scene there is, again, no romance or happiness, only sordid lustful preoccupation.

There are other instances in which the movie presents an unseemly sexual environment. The male youths joke about wanting to have sex, and even bring up the idea of bestiality (which apparently was more overt in the book). Later in the movie, one youth, Joe Bob Blanton (Barc Doyle), who is supposedly a religious person, is apprehended before he molests a small girl, implying that religion has fallen on hard times in the twentieth century. The character of Billy (Timothy’s actual brother, Sam Bottoms) is Sonny’s young friend. He is mentally challenged, and is always smiling and friendly. Sonny, and, later, even Duane, have an affectionate ritual they perform with Billy, taking his cap off and turning the bill backwards, a gesture that seems to want to preserve his childlike personality. He is the representation of pure innocence in this fallen world. However, Duane, upset by Jacy’s abandonment of him in favor of the rich crowd, joins his friends in an attempt to get Billy to lose his virginity. Here, the young men act as if they are doing him a favor by introducing Billy to sex, but there is no affection in the encounter, no fulfilling intimacy here. They bring Billy to a woman (Helena Humann) who will agree to having sex for money. She is crude and cruel to Billy, punching him after he prematurely climaxes without successfully having intercourse. Sonny shows up but is too late to stop the prank.

Sam the Lion takes care of Billy, and is outraged at how the boys treated the youth. As Duane cowardly hides in the truck, Sam tells the young men, “You boys can get on out of here, I don’t want to have no more to do with you. Scarin’ a poor, unfortunate creature like Billy so’s you could have a few laughs. I’ve been around that trashy behavior all my life. I’m gettin’ tired of puttin’ up with it.” Sam bans the boys from his cafe, pool hall, and theater as punishment for their behavior. The older man is the moral center of the story and knows the importance of forgiveness. Later, when Genevieve, who is another kind soul in the town, allows Sonny to have some food in the cafe, Sam shows up and allows her to serve Sonny.

Sam takes Sonny and Billy on a fishing trip out to the local pond. Sam reminisces about how he had an exciting love affair with a woman twenty years prior. They would go skinny-dipping in the water next to where he now sits, an older man who has no love in his life. But, the thoughts of her are strong and have fueled him through the years. He tells Sonny, “If she was here, I’d probably be just as crazy now as I was then in about five minutes. Ain’t that ridiculous? Naw, it ain’t really. ‘Cause being crazy about a woman like her is always the right thing to do. Being an old decrepit bag of bones, that’s what’s ridiculous. Gettin’ old.” She was already married, so they could not have a life together. He at least was able to have experienced a true, passionate love, unlike the empty sexual experiences of those in the present. But he, like the town, maybe the country, is in a state of decline, and all he has left are memories, which are sort of like a movie projection in his mind.

Sonny and Duane are looking for some escape from their dull lives and decide to take a short holiday to Mexico to celebrate New Year’s Eve (although the new year doesn’t promise to be any improvement over the old one). Before leaving they encounter Sam, who seems to have regrets about not being carefree like the boys. They ask Sam if he wants to join him. There is a significant pause as he weighs the possibility, (which will be echoed later in a scene with Lois and Sonny). But, he realizes that kind of partying is in his past. He gives the boys some money in a form of vicarious enabling of the younger generation to enjoy the exuberance and thrills he once experienced. After they return from their trip, the boys learn that Sam died of a heart attack. It’s as if whatever was left of the meaningful old times passed away with him. Sam left the theater to Jessie Mosey (Jessie Lee Fulton), who worked there. He gave the cafe to Genevieve, and he left the pool hall to Sonny, which surprises the young man.

Sonny and Ruth begin an affair. It is uncomfortable at first, and they appear unable to communicate their feelings as they go through the physical motions. They probably feel strange about the age difference between them and the fact that Ruth is married. She hints at the problem as to why she has had such a sterile love life. Despite everybody supposedly knowing each other’s business in the town, Ruth asks Sony, “Don’t you know?” Apparently, her husband is gay, so in Ruth’s marriage we have another example of the lack of a meaningful connection. As time passes however, the two become comfortable and happy with each other, and this period of their relationship is a bright spot in an otherwise psychologically overcast world.

The lack of any belief in romantic love is mirrored by how the rich kid, Bobby Sheen, tells Jacy that he won’t have anything to do with her until she loses her virginity. It’s as if the lost souls here don’t want anyone uncorrupted to exist in their defiled existence. Jacy, trying to find her place of acceptance, now recruits Duane to have sex with her so she can be initiated into Bobby’s world. Duane has been treated dismissively by Jacy, and, although he wants to have sex with her, must realize subconsciously, that she is not sincere about caring for him. He is impotent in the encounter, and she scolds him in humiliating fashion. In a reversal of ideas about traditionally acceptable behavior, Jacy complains that she does not want the other young people in the town to think she is still a virgin. Duane is eventually able to do the deed. The unscrupulous Jacy breaks up with him, saying she would rather be with Bobby. Duane, devastated by Jacy’s rejection, again, leaves for an oil drilling job. However, Jacy’s plans are thwarted when Bobby marries someone else, demonstrating a sort of retribution cycle for bad behavior. Jacy is constantly looking for adoration, and comes on to Lois’s lover, Abilene, in a strange bit of competition, as if she is trying to out-seduce her mother. They desecrate the memory of the moral Sam by having sex on one of the pool tables there after hours. But, she does not get the adulation she seeks from Abilene. He has only used her for carnal satisfaction, and coldly disposes of her after they have sex.

Jacy, now feeling rejected herself, and seeking attention again in this vacuous world, finds out from her mother, Lois, (who tries to comfort her daughter since she, too, has some redeemable qualities) about the affair between Sonny and Ruth. Jacy now sets her sights on Sonny, who she knows is attracted to her. Sonny, despite his kindness toward Bobby and his admiration of the ethical Sam, allows himself to be manipulated by Jacy. As he did with his girlfriend, Charlene, he now dumps Ruth. In a heartbreaking scene, the happy Ruth is painting her bedroom blue, Sonny’s favorite color, at the same time he betrays her. As our class instructor pointed out, In the background the song “Blue Velvet” is heard, whose romantic lyrics echo her actions. But, the reality is that her heart will be broken when Sonny does not appear to appreciate her efforts to make him happy. (The songs in the soundtrack are mostly country western, which have a tendency to emphasize the pain of failed romances, which is appropriate for this story).

Duane returns home and has learned that Jacy is dating Sonny. Duane now feels betrayed by his best friend, and the two get into a fight. Duane is holding a beer bottle which breaks, and Sonny’s eye is injured, causing him to have impaired vision. Duane has lost the girl he loved and the loyalty of his best friend. He feels that he has nothing left for him in Anarene, and leaves to join the Army. Sonny, maybe out of guilt for also betraying Ruth, refuses to see her when she comes to visit him at the hospital.

Jacy, in her distorted view of love which amounts to narcissism in this emotionally disconnected environment, feels special because there was a fight between two men for her affection. She tells Sonny that they should elope, which they do, but it is just a pretend marriage, another romantic facade without substance. She left a note for her parents to discover what Jacy planned to do. It was as if the young woman wanted to get caught, and only wished to attain recognition, like a current reality star, who can’t become popular through meritorious achievement, but only through being infamous. They are caught by a policeman and returned home. The marriage is eventually annulled since there wasn’t even time for a consummation, and Jacy eventually goes away to college. Will she find a purposeful path elsewhere? The movie does not offer us any hope that such will be the case.

Lois drives Sonny home after he and Jacy are caught. She seems to understand Sonny’s desire to have a special relationship with someone. She reveals that she is the woman who was Sam the Lion’s great love. She, like him, felt alive in that time together, but all she has now are those memories to remind her of what true love was really like. She is different from other women around her because Sam showed her how alive life can be. She says, “If it wasn’t for Sam, I would have missed it, whatever it is. I’d have been one of them amity types that thinks that playin’ bridge is about the best thing that life has to offer.” But, she stayed in her unfulfilling marriage for the money, and sacrificed an enhanced life with Sam. She now pauses, as did Sam when he contemplated about going with the boys to Mexico. She is thinking about being intimate with Sonny, who may be able to give her back that optimism that young love once promised. But, she passes, realizing, just as did Sam, that the time has passed, and she can’t return to it.

Months pass, and Sonny is at a football game, the sport now a part of his past that can’t be recovered. He learns that Duane is on leave from the Army and he seeks out his old friend. The two reconcile, with Sonny forgiving Duane for the eye injury and Duane renewing their friendship despite Sonny’s relationship with Jacy. It’s as if they are channeling Sam’s quality of compassion. They attend the last movie to be shown at the Royal, which is closing because of poor attendance. The film is Red River, the classic movie about heroes that are now anachronistic in a cynical time. The next day, Sonny sees Duane off at the bus station. He and Jacy could not find meaning for themselves there, and those who have stayed seem to simply exist without purpose.

After Duane leaves, Sonny sees men crowded together on the main street of the town. He finds Billy on the ground after being hit and killed by a truck. The men assembled don’t show any strong feelings, as if dead inside. They just seem to wonder what the boy was doing with a broom in the middle of the street. Sonny is outraged at their lack of compassion. He yells that Billy was just “sweeping.” The boy symbolically seems to be a type of Sisyphus, trying to perform the pointless act of spiritually cleaning a place whose soul had become buried in hopelessness.

With Billy’s death, we have an end to the purity of innocence. Sonny drives out of town, but he can’t leave, and returns. Mythical stories seem to require suffering in order to gain understanding. Sonny is sort of like Oedipus. He has slept with a mother figure in the form of Ruth, and, like Oedipus, sees his wrongdoings only after he is blind. He has hurt others by his betrayals, but he now returns to the town and to Ruth. Perhaps he must symbolically take up Billy’s broom, a sort of moralistic baton inherited by him from Sam. She is angry at him for how she has irreparably hurt her, yelling, “You’ve ruined it and it’s lost completely. Just you needing me won’t make it come back.” Her words could refer to the world’s spiritual loss at large. He silently reaches out to her and gently holds her hand. This simple physical act carries more feeling, caring, and intimacy than all of the detached sexual couplings between the others in the story. Ruth now also shows the genuine human quality of forgiveness that can heal emotional wounds, and she comforts Sonny by saying, in a motherly tone, “Never you mind, honey. Never you mind.”

At the end of the film, we have a sort of bookend to the beginning. The story started in the fall and ends there, showing there has been no progress in the town. The howling wind is back. The camera now pans from left to right and stops as the movie began with a shot of the Royal movie theater, its marquee blank, now dethroned. All that remains are fleeting happy moments and memories.

The next film is Blood Simple.