Bogdanovich and his cinematographer, Robert Surtees, use a lot of horizontal pans to show the town hunkered down flat against the land we have the feeling that emptiness surrounds these weathered buildings.ĭuane and Sonny presumably have homes to go to, but their lives center around their cars - Sonny's old pickup and Duane's like-new Mercury. Sam the Lion hunches his shoulders into his sheepskin jacket. A wind blows down the deserted main street and in through the door of the pool hall. It always seems too hot or too cold in Anarene. On the screen are classics like " Red River" and "Wagonmaster," which speak to the legends of this land, but already the ugly little black and white sets in local living rooms are hypnotizing the locals with "Strike It Rich!" and other banal trivialities that have nothing to do with their lives, or anyone's lives. 12, 1951 - the eve of the Korean War, and the beginning of the end for movie houses like the Royal, where Sonny grapples in the back row with his plump girlfriend Charlene (Sharon Taggart), while enviously watching Duane kiss the town beauty, Jacy Farrow ( Cybill Shepherd).
Among those who treasure Sam the Lion are Sonny Crawford ( Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson ( Jeff Bridges), co-captains of the local football team, which is so bad the local men look at them in disgust and shake their heads.īogdanovich's 1971 film, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry, opens on Saturday, Nov. He owns the diner, the pool hall, and the Royal theater, and without those three places, there is no place to go in Anarene except to bed, which explains the desperate and lonely adulteries and teenage fumblings that pass for sex. Sam, played by the veteran Western actor Ben Johnson, is the soul of Anarene. Bernstein remembers a girl with a parasol who he saw once, 50 years ago, and still cherishes in his memory as a beacon of what could have been.
I'm sure he was thinking of the monologue in " Citizen Kane" (1941) where old Mr.
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