'LAST PICTURE SHOW' OFFERS COMPELLING FILM ARTISTRY The starter on the battered pickup truck grinds and groans trying to find the spark of life And as it wheezes consumptively the camera pans the paint-peeled buildings and starkly lonesome streets of Anarene Tex a town also looking vainly for an ignition that will never come Thus in one opening shot young director Peter Bogdanovich has set the mood for his “The Last Picture Show” which holds up for two compelling hours of motion picture artistry The film viewed Wednesday at an advance screening prior to its Friday opening at the Opera House Cinema is all we have been told it would be even beyond its Oscar nomination as one of the year’s top five pictures Friday you too will see why nominations also went to Bogdanovich in his directorial debut and to four of the principal “unknowns” in the cast Cloris Leachman Jeff Bridges Ellen Burstyn and that Everyman Cowboy Ben Johnson AUTHOR NOMINATED FOR OSCAR There is also an Oscar nomination for Larry McMurtry the former TCU instructor who has lovingly adapted his novel to screenplay form If “The Last Picture Show” smacks somewhat of McMurtry’s “Ilud” that’s because he is on firm ground recalling the West Texas of yesterday This is McMurtry country The wind blows the screen doors slam the drillers and ranchers sit around the pool hall cussing the high school football team the tall Texaco standard looms over Main Street minus its round trademark disk The time is 1951 lapping over into 1952 and we know it in countless ways without it ever being mentioned From every nickel juke box from every pickup radio Hank Williams and Tony Bennett divide time on “Cold Cold Heart” Pfc Eddie Fisher does “Wish You Were Here” Jo Stafford recalls “You Belong to Me” The antique TV screens show us antique shots of Warren Hull on “Strike It Rich” and a younger Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca on the Saturday nights of two decades ago It is the time of the ducktail haircut on boys an age of innocence when the loose girl in town repulses a high school athlete’s advances in the town’s only movie house with “You wasn’t even in the backfield!” The age wasn’t so innocent though that Bogdanovich’s film could escape a 1972 “R” rating and not upset some of the citizens of Archer City (where it was filmed) who are claiming with some justification that the movie depicts a town obsessed with sex “The Last Picture Show” covers (or uncovers) it all from high school “petting” to nude swimming parties by the well-to-do to a high school senior having an affair with the coach’s wife The answer of course is that Anarene is no different than Peyton Place Manhattan or Cedar Rapids if you are zeroing in on sex practices And “The Last Picture Show” — both visually and audibly — zeros in unrelentingly At the outset Spencer Tracy and Liz Taylor are on the marquee of the town’s only picture show in “Father of the Bride” At the fadeout the marquee is blank Lives have touched lives have ended and we know the sheet is about to be pulled over the face of a terminal town DEATH SIGNALS END OF ANARENE Ben Johnson the drawling sidekick of many a John Wayne western excels in his largest role to date — Sam the Lion grizzled owner of the town’s picture show cafe and pool hall When he dies we know the catalyst for Anarene is gone and the inevitable is nearer Young Jeff Bridges is superb as the backfield star who rides a bus away to the Korean war one day the only future left when the roar of the crowd has died No less superior — but overlooked in the Oscar nominations — is Timothy Bottoms the younger catalyst who dallies with the coach’s wife while the husband is supervising basketball practice (The star’s younger brother Sam Bottoms is poignant as the town’s retarded youngster) Ellen Burstyn’s nomination is for her role as the faded beauty mother of the town’s most beautiful daughter Oddly the performance of the daughter Cybill Shepherd outshines the mother’s (In other interesting casting there’s TV’s Clu Gulager as an oil field roughneck with rougher bedroom tactics and Broadway’s Eileen Brennan — the singing Irene Malloy of “Hello Dolly” — as a cynical waitress) But clearly the outstanding performance comes from Cloris Leachman as the dowdy pathetic coach’s wife who will settle for love — any kind of love — even if it comes from a student with a changing voice She is tremendous and totally unforgettable “The Last Picture Show” is in black and white It could be no other way
