At first glance, this movie appears to be plagued by a naïve sense of nostalgia, the way it longs for youth and the days of Spencer Tracy and Howard Hawks.  Instead, this masterpiece has great depth and acknowledges the difficulty of coming to terms with the past.  Director Peter Bogdanovich accurately and movingly depicts sexual awakening and loss of innocence in this film, guiding a brilliant cast through heartache, jealousy and sexual frustration.  A simple plot synopsis would not do this film justice is not about the several intertwining relationships but rather the confusion and emotions experienced by the characters.  This movie is more concerned with getting to know its characters than develop a straightforward story, making it a complex character study despite its apparent simplicity.

There is a very young Jeff Bridges, an amateur in the sack struggling to find his place in life.  Cybill Shepherd is gorgeous but dangerous as the spoiled bitch of the town, tempting boys and breaking hearts.  Ben Johnson won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor as Sam the Lion, the emotional backbone of the city who owns the town’s movie theatre and pool house.  His monologue about an affair with a younger woman years ago is a great moment in American movie history, summing up the film as a quite sigh of recognition of days past.  However, the best performance comes from (Northwestern alumna) Cloris Leachman, who also won a supporting acting Oscar for her work as a middle-aged wife longing for love but ignored by her husband.  She is heart-wrenching in particular in one scene, crying as she as an affair in an attempt to fill the emptiness in her life.  In The Last Picture Show, lovers betray lovers, and friends betray friends.  All the relationships, affairs and cruel jokes culminate in a tragic accident that signals the true death of blissful ignorance in the Texas town.

The black-and-white photography of the film is simple, but the film could not have been shot any other way.  The composition appears to pay homage to Westerns like Howard Hawks’s Red River, chosen in the movie to be the last picture shown in Sam the Lion’s theatre before shutting down.  For Bogdanovich, film, youth and love are part of a past that has dissolved into a sort of myth.  Just like the cowboys in the films of Howard Hawks, the teenagers and adults in this town experience or have once experience true adventure, but it is over when the theatre lights turn on, signaling the end of the last picture show.  They must face the painful truth that all good things must come to an end.