The introductory films of Peter Bogdanovich (b.1939) Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973) - were clearly the works of a man who knew and loved the history of cinema and who relished the opportunity of paying tribute to such as Boris Karloff and cheap B-status horror, 1940s black-and-white screwball comedy, Will Rogers, John Ford and Thirties' child-stars. But the real authority of Bogdanovich's debut was that his celebration of those earlier styles were always used to enhance his portraits of people and their problems.
With Targets he bandied his acerbic style and flair for turning things to his advantage as no one else could given an anemically budgeted, no-frills Roger Corman production, Bogdanovich waves his wand and grants a miracle or three with his centerpiece being an aging Boris Karloff and what results is an exceptionally capable original thriller.
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| Halter Skalter |
The Last Picture Show is considered Bogdanovich's finest cinematic achievement. Taken straight from the pages of Larry McMurtry's autobiographical novel that centers on a rural Texas community during the early 1950's, it harks to the atmospheric French landscape of poetic realist films two decades prior, chiefly in the domain of director Jean Renoir. There is ever an underlying nostalgia in Bogdanovich films for the awakening of teenage sexuality.
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| No happy ending for O'Neal |
Bogdanovich also had a true affinity for the screwball comedy as seen in What's Up Doc? which concerns a madcap girl (Barbara Streisand) who incessantly attempts seducing a reserved musicologist portrayed by Ryan O'Neal.
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| One of the many convivial moments in At Long Last Love (1975) |
Bogdanovich's career then began to falter and his films Daisy Miller (1974) followed by At Long Last Love in 1975 and Nickelodeon (1976) were seemingly smug and slapdash as compared to his earlier canon.
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| The man , the myth, the hand-rolled Cuban enthusiast |
After a three-year absence however, he reinstated his reputation with a skilled film version of Paul Theroux's Saint Jack (1979) about the expatriate American owner of a house of ill-repute in Singapore. But 1981's romantic New York comedy They All Laughed, starring Ben Gazzara and Audrey Hepburn achieved only a direct to video release in Britain. Mask (1985) however, was a convincing and poignant portrait of the relationship between a physically deformed teenager (Eric Stoltz) and his bohemian mother (Cher).