I love this film -- it has so much sadness, but there's nothing weak or self-pitying about any of the characters. They just carry on, even without a purpose in their lives. Larry McMurtry is a genius at taking stuff that would be unspeakably horrible if it weren't so funny, and then making it really funny. Peter Bogdanovich focuses more on the sadness than the laughter, but he also gets a glowing sensuality from Cybill Shepherd (as Jacy) and a warmth and humanity from Ben Johnson (as Sam the Lion) that are only hinted at in the book. One obvious issue no one else has mentioned is the irony that this book (and film) appeared long before the LONESOME DOVE mini-series, yet it deals with the Texas that rangers Call and McRae sacrificed so much to create. One of the themes of LONESEOME DOVE is Gus asking plaintively, "was it worth it?"And of course, the answer is contained in this film. Because these characters are living such stunted, joyless lives that it seems very hard to believe that the buffalo, the Comanche, and the Mexicans all had to be sacrificed to make way for the town of Thalia. And more than that, you feel that somewhere Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf are actually laughing at these people. And that if a war party of ghost Comanche could come back and destroy the whole town it would be more of a mercy killing than anything else. And none of that makes the book itself any less poignant. Just the opposite, in fact.

This is a great picture based upon a great book.The title of both gets immediately to the heart of things.The book establishes the probability that after Sam the lion & Lois Farrow, Sonny Crawford, of the following generation, is the most intelligent person in Anarene, the fictional Texas small town.For me, the premise of author Larry McMurtry's novel is the source of the greatness of this coming-of-age story. As everyone knows, the title refers to the closing of The Royal, the movie house in downtown Anarene. The location is becoming a ghost town as Mrs. Mosey, the theater's operator, reveals to best buddies Sonny & Duane her intention to shutter the place after one last unspooling of "Red River." It's the night before Duane goes off to fight in Korea.The deeper, subtler meaning of the title refers to the process of growing up mentally, which means seeing beyond Hollywood-fueled fantasies about what life is supposed to be in favor of clear-eyed visions of what is your own real life in actuality.At the center of the story is the trio of Sonny, Duane & Jacy, the girl. There's a late-blooming triangle of competition between the two boys seeking the love of Jacy, their (and everyone else's) dream girl in the flesh. Duane gives everything he's got to the winning of Jacy, whereas Sonny, who never expected to get his chance with her, finally does, but only after falling in love with Ruth Popper, the forty-year-old abandoned wife of the macho but gay high school physical education teacher.Jacy is the villain of the story because she's a very smart schemer who tries, almost diabolically, to realize in the flesh the dreamy scenarios that fill her head in the wake of countless trips to the matinée. Her real life is her enemy because it keeps refusing to conform itself to her Hollywood-laced mental picture of how things are supposed to be. She's the most beautiful girl in town and she's a seductress and yet, actually, she doesn't even like sex, that is, not real sex as sharply distinguished from what she's seen in the movies.Duane, a mostly good-natured guy with strength & athletic prowess, in accordance with the standard movie scenario, figures to be the best match for Jacy. Throughout most of the story, he's got a white-knuckle grip on this dream & his insane jealousy where Jacy's concerned turns him into a violent loose cannon who almost wrecks his bff connection to Sonny.Sonny cherishes the same sort of dreams that animate Jacy & Duane, except that his sharp mind makes him too observant of what's in front of him to be as completely enchanted (and distracted) as the other two. This openness to immediate reality over celluloid dreams delivers him into a real life love relationship with Ruth Popper, a good & vital woman who outperforms Jacy in every important category of womanhood.Picture Jacy & Duane facing the prospect of an unfashionable lover more than twenty years their senior. Neither would consider saying yes because the reality is too far removed from what they've seen on screen. Sonny almost makes the same mistake with Jacy until he sees that her marriage proposal was just a temporary movie scenario playing in her head. Awakened from the picture show in his head, Sonny returns to his lover in real life, Ruth Popper.

The Last Picture Show is a movie with supreme atmosphere. From the salty small town bartender to the guy who brings his own pool cue to the bar to the men placing bets on the outcome of the high school football game. It presents a great snapshot of a '50's town with one main drag and characters who are on a treadmill to nowhere.A majority of the "moral decay" referenced in the film's synopsis deals with people getting naked and particularly with a May-December relationship between a high school boy and his gym teacher's comely wife. The main plot centers on a love triangle between a youthful Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms and the lovely Cybill Shepherd, whose beauty is only slightly diminished by the rottenness of her character.The movie definitely has one of the top 5 deflowering scenes I have ever witnessed. It happens on a pool table with close shots of Shepherd lacing her fingers through two leather latticed pool pockets and kneading at them in the manner of a cat.The soundtrack ladles up a ton of Hank Williams, which is really pleasing, and the final 15 minutes feature some outrageously literary moments that are very fun to watch.

Good examination of 50s rural America, and the death thereof. Interesting character- and relationship-based plot. Direction by Peter Bogdanovich is solid. The black & white cinematography is irritating at first, as you feel that the main characters, in the primes of their lives, deserve colour. However, the B&W becomes more relevant the further into the movie you go.Great performances, from then-unknown actors in their earliest roles: Jeff Bridges, Cybil Shepherd (debut role), Timothy Bottoms (2nd movie). The veterans - Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Eileen Brennan, Cloris Leachman - are superb too.Only negatives are that the movie drifts a bit in the middle, and it is only the very powerful ending that makes it great. This, and the soundtrack - every song seems to be by Hank Williams. Didn't they have anything else on the radio in 1950s Texas?