Color movies have become popular in the United States since the 1950s. However, black-and-white movies have not disappeared. Some directors will boldly abandon color images for artistic effects. "The Last Movie" in 1971 tells the story of a few American youths in a small town. Youth should be colorful, but director Peter Bogdanovic chose black and white film.
Because what he wants to express is the loneliness, depression, and confusion of the characters.
The background of the story is set in a small town in Texas, USA in 1951.
The middle-aged cowboy Sam opened a movie theater, coffee shop, and billiard room in the town, providing young people in the town with a place for entertainment and leisure.
The title "The Last Movie" has actually spoiled that Sam's theater will eventually go bankrupt.
It was from 1949 to 1951 that more and more television stations were established in the United States, and many entertainment programs were broadcast throughout the country. The number of home TV sets increased from one million to ten million.
As Ms. Mosey said, the children are watching TV all day long, and no one wants to watch movies anymore.
In such a big environment, theaters will inevitably close.
The whole movie is about the life of the residents of the small town before the last movie is shown in the theater.
Peter Bogdanovic’s narrative is clean, direct and fragmented.
The clean and direct thing is that he obviously didn't introduce the families in the town one by one, but after seeing about one-third of them, the main characters can be easily distinguished and sorted out.
The story is about a pair of brothers, three stores, and two families.
The male protagonists Sonny and Duane are good brothers, and they both have girlfriends at the beginning of the film.
Jeff Bridges plays Duane. Many years later, he won the Oscar winner with "Crazy Heart" and played the big villain in "Iron Man" .
Sam, the cowboy who "monopolizes" the entertainment industry in the small town, is a very popular person.
In the billiard room, he adopted Billy, a mentally retarded patient.
In the cafe, Genevieve, who is good at making cheeseburgers, helped him see the shop.
In the cinema, Miss Mosey helped him sell tickets.
Duane's girlfriend Jacy, she can be said to be a "zhenhua".
And her mother Lois still has the charm.
Because the family is relatively rich, Lois doesn't want Jacy to associate with Duane, who has the wrong family, which makes Jacy feel unhappy.
It is Alan Bostine who plays the role of mother Lois. Many years later, she won the Oscar for her "Goodbye Alice" , has classic works such as "Requiem for Dreams" , and played the role of the elderly heroine Murphy in "Interstellar" .
Popper, Sonny's school team coach, has a wife Ruth in his family.
Since Popper is often in school, the relationship between their husband and wife has become weaker and weaker.
Obviously Popper called Sonny to take Ruth to the hospital, but Ruth didn't know it at all. It was obvious that the communication between Popper and Ruth was very rare.
The first season of "My Gifted Girlfriend" , which also focuses on a small town, introduces each major family one by one through the protagonist's monologue.
TV dramas can have plenty of time to do this, but the movie seems clumsy to do it this way.
"The Last Movie" correctly and effectively uses the narrative mode that belongs to the film.
Fragilely, it is difficult for the audience to distinguish which one is the main line of the plot.
Is it the love triangle between Sonny and Duane brothers and Jacy, or the unusual relationship between Sonny and Ruth?
It should be all right.
As one of the representative works of the new Hollywood movie, the different narrative method of "The Last Movie" makes the movie unique and innovative. It also echoes the youthful and rebellious characteristics of many young characters in the film.
What’s more subtle is that the lens used by Peter Bogdanovic does not seem to have much lens content, but cleverly uses the distance of the lens and the position of the actor to intuitively show the relationship between the role and the role. relation.
For example, when Sonny and Ruth first met, they were two or three positions apart.
Then, through the first angle of view, I used the lens to approach Ruth, implying that the distance between the two is approaching.
When the two met again, looking up at the camera, they both encroached on each other's positions.
Seeing this, the audience will have a strong feeling, as if something terrible will happen next.
Then look at Jacy and a young man who is plotting bad things. Although the kid is obviously interesting to Jacy, the distance between him and Jacy is half a body. The audience can clearly see that the relationship between the two is not very good.
Looking at Sonny and his father again, the two leaned on the two sides of the screen, with a distance between them, indicating that there is a gap in the relationship between the two.
If you can explain the relationship between the characters through the language of the lens, you don't have to spend time clarifying other things.
I rashly added a monologue to express the undercurrents in the character's heart or something. It's common to do this in a TV series, but in movies like this, most of the time it only shows that the director's level is not enough.
Although the look and feel of "The Last Movie" is a bit dull, there is no shortage of surprises in the plot.
In addition to the high-energy main story of Sonny and Ruth, the hidden branch of the cowboy Sam will also "explode" behind it.
He told Sonny that he once had a young "confidante", and the two had a crazy time.
In fact, the confidante is in the town, and is a character that has appeared before.
Sam's remarks are foreshadowing, while still discussing questions.
The theme of the whole film is the word "crazy".
For several adult characters, as the years go by, they have lost the feeling of being young and frivolous.
Ruth had been eager to be crazy again, so he couldn't help getting close to the bloody Sonny.
Sam likes to deal with Sonny, and it's probably because he saw his youth in Sonny.
But for many young characters, they can't have craziness.
The classic example is Jacy.
Her relationship with Duane was interfered by her parents, and in fact, she was not so obsessed with Duane.
What she really wanted to do was to "liberate" herself completely, so when someone invited him to a nude swimming party, she volunteered.
As the plot progressed, she became more and more brave, even daring to run away behind her parents.
Unfortunately, she still couldn't get what she wanted.
At that time, I should have been less frivolous last year, but there were too many things that girls were not allowed to do.
Jacy's resistance also catered to the "sexual liberation movement" that took place in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
Although Sonny did something very crazy, he first dumped his girlfriend, then succeeded in "breaking the place", and then soaked his brother's favorite girl. However, his madness cannot be carried out blatantly. In the end, his desires were not satisfied, and with the departure of his friend Duane, life suddenly began to become lonely.
What "The Last Movie" expresses is that in the early 1950s, many Americans' inner desires and madness could not be released.
People in this state are lonely, depressed, and confused.
That's how Sonny came to the end of the story.
Friends Sam, Duane, and Billy left him one by one. He felt so lonely, so he found Ruth back shamelessly.
Getting along with Ruth is depressing. In fact, he prefers to be with Jacy, because that way he can release his emotions freely in front of everyone.
He didn't know what he should do next, maybe he wanted to ask Ruth to get rid of his inner confusion.
The key movie theater scenes only appeared twice in total.
The first time it was Sonny and Duane each bringing their girlfriends;
The second time was before the theater closed down, Sonny and Duane watched the last movie "Red River Valley" .
The cinema is a symbol of "crazy".
In the theater, Sonny and Duane are boldly intimate with their girlfriends.
The theater closed, symbolizing the end of Sonny's crazy era.
The young people who have gradually moved from school to the adult world will be like Sam, who can only miss the old days before the cinema collapses in the future.
In a nutshell, time waits for no one, and if you are not crazy, you can only watch yourself grow old.
Don't wait until the "cinema" closes to know how beautiful the "old days" are.
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