If one day you happen to pass by Archer City, a rough and neat Texas town north of Dallas and Forth Worth, spend a few words, something like a prayer, for Peter Bogdanovich, who died yesterday at the age of 82, after a fluctuating existence between flashes of ingenuity and ruinous falls. In that area, in fact, the American director, with his expression always afflicted but capable of very pleasant discussions, set the film “The last show”, released in 1971 and taken as a small treasure of the Templars from the novel “The Last Picture Show” by Larry McMurtry. Who in Archer City was born and died, in March last year, after having given a splendid lesson on fidelity to the roots and the inevitable ruin that follows.
In his own way, Bogdanovich, a New Yorker in his teens, the son of a Serbian painter and a well-bred Austrian lady of proud Jewish membership, was a frontier man. In the novel McMurtry writes: “Loneliness is like ice. When you have been alone for a long time, you do not realize that you are cold but you have it all right… “. When “The Last Show” passed over the grate of splendid black and white, its young performers, especially Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd, drew an imaginary line across the desert of a ghost town, Anarene, where the only satisfaction in 1951 was precisely the last screening in a small cinema.
Of himself, Bogdanovich, said more hastily: “I was born and I immediately loved films”.
If the generations go down because we become adults, this director who has passed them all, including the annoyance of Hollywood for repeated flops but first of all for his ability to study this art of the twentieth century, is really, after his death, one of the last heroes, an Upper West Side cowboy who wandered thoughtfully but happy in the great celluloid dream of the masters John Ford, Howard Hawks, Aldred Hitchcock, George Cuckor, the sparkling wizard of comedy, up to Orson Welles, mentor and amused admirer of that boy who first studied, then avoided copying.
To be honest, you will never find a Bogdanovich in Italian cinema, also because the last generation of directors has already been crushed by masters like Dino Risi and Mario Monicelli. At certain times, as in “Paper Moon”, set in the 1930s with Ryan O’Neal and daughter Tatum adrift in the Great Crisis, Bogdanovich may evoke a certain Clint Eastwood, especially the latter, where the overwhelming force of the past, in terms of devotion and honesty, gives some relief to the last fires of an existence. While studying as a sorcerer’s apprentice of the masters, Bogdanovich described them with ardor and competence in essays published for the MoMA in New York.
Add “But does daddy send it alone?” with Barbra Streisand and the hilarious “… and they all laughed” with Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara and Dorothy Stratten, and you will find yourself in a world of lightness in telling and depth in reflecting that today no longer exists.
Among other things, Stratten, a beautiful Playboy model, with whom she was having an affair, was killed at the end of the shoot by her jealous husband, photographer Paul Snider, dealing Bogdanovich a terrible blow. Followed by accusations of having seduced Dorothy’s younger sister, whom he ended up marrying. Then there was bankruptcy.
A good movie like “Mask” with Cher and the definitive unwanted trademark stamped by the Hollywood majors. That sad face, but serious and reliable, you will surely remember it in “The Sopranos” where he plays the part of a psychotherapist. Quentin Tarantino has always appreciated its humanity and inspiration. About himself, years ago, the incredible Peter said: “The point is that success is too much of a burden. Nobody prepares you for us and you are wrong to believe that you are infallible ». And it happens that at 82 you discover that you have never been.
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