Notes and scribblings: R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich

With the death of Peter Bogdanovich we have lost another link to the glorious distant past of American cinema. He did leave behind many treasurable interviews, essays and anecdotes regarding some of those he revered most - Cary Grant, James Stewart, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford among others as well as documentaries on Ford and Buster Keaton. The great director Bertrand Tavernier passed away in March last year and in some ways he was a similar figure in regard to French cinema and its history.

The first serious book on cinema that I acquired was 'This Is Orson Welles', a collection of interviews (edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum) that a young Peter Bogdanovich did with Welles from the late 1960s through to the mid 1970s. It was a present from my parents on a visit to a random bookshop in King's Lynn when I was a teenager. In the years since I've read it from cover to cover many times and my copy is thoroughly worn through and tattered but the personal significance and sentimental value of the thing is hard to overstate. For me, it makes a biography of Welles more or less redundant as it gives you a real sense of Welles's personality behind the maverick persona, his sense of humour, his views and passions and an insight in to the incredible life that he lived. Bogdanovich is often accused of being a sycophant when dealing with his heroes but he challenges Welles on certain topics and respectfully disagrees on key subjects. It comes across as an enlightening experience for both men. Alongside the likes of Oja Kodar, Gary Graver, Henry Jaglom, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum he was one of several loyal Welles associates and collaborators to whom we owe a great deal for the continuing interest in Welles's work and they were all important advocates of his later career, helping make much of it possible.

In addition to the book on Welles I've greatly enjoyed 'Who the Devil Made It', a terrific collection of interviews that Bogdanovich did with top Hollywood directors like Don Siegel, Edgar G. Ulmer, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Allan Dwan, Leo McCarey, Howard Hawks and Robert Aldrich.

There was a trend for film critics to try their hand at directing films in the 1960s, most notably the French New Wave crowd (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette & Chabrol) from the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento in Italy and Lindsay Anderson in the U.K. In the U.S. Bogdanovich's fellow Movie Brat Paul Schrader had also been a critic and published works on key figures in international cinema. Not long after the Welles book changed the way I thought about film I encountered Bogdanovich's astonishing 1968 debut feature Targets on a late night BBC 2 screening from the series Moviedrome, a showcase for cult movies with introductions by Alex Cox and subsequently, Mark Cousins. Some kind person shared a recording of the introduction on YouTube:

In the pre-internet age, there was an incredible sense of discovery that came with seeing such films, either by chance, luck or through dedicated research and effort, trawling through TV schedules and old film guides. I had read about it being a tremendous late career highlight for its ageing star Boris Karloff, who had been one of my Horror idols ever since I first viewed Frankenstein. The film is something of an anomaly in Bogdanovich's output, and his later work would generally steer clear from violent themes.

As a filmmaker he shared a cine-literate approach with some of his contemporaries such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme and like them and many other greats he served his apprenticeship under the legendary low budget director/producer/distributor Roger Corman, who produced Targets. It would be my introduction to the filmography of one of the most singular and erratic talents in modern American cinema. I'm greatly looking forward to the forthcoming BFI Blu-Ray disc of the film later in the year.

Targets (1968)

Following his subsequent career has proved to be challenging at times (due to the unavailability of certain titles) but also hugely rewarding. In terms of critical and commercial success his career unquestionably peaked at an early stage. His sophomore film, The Last Picture Show, is still his best known and most celebrated.

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Many have observed that his then-wife Polly Platt was a highly significant (and for a long time undervalued) creative collaborator in his early career, working in an official capacity as a production designer and co-writer but she played a crucial role in shaping those films in other respects such as casting, costumes and choice of material. Before their separation they worked together on two subsequent hits (What's Up Doc? and Paper Moon), both of which were tributes to films of yesteryear and that typified Bogdanovich's affinity with the past.

His fortunes had shifted considerably by the mid-1970s after a trio of much derided flops (Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon). These 3 titles are still on my "to watch" list as the received wisdom for decades afterwards was that they were all unmitigated disasters but in recent years there have been signs of a newfound appreciation for the first two of those mentioned. Proof perhaps that the internet is a great way for even the most despised films to have a second life. The divorce from Platt, relationships with the actress Cybill Shepherd and Playboy model Dorothy Stratten as well as the growing feeling that he had been a flash in the pan behind the camera attracted fierce criticism from both the press and fellow figures in the industry and seemed to be linked to his ever-growing misfortunes. Besides 1985's Mask he would never regain the prestige or success of his early work. His career has been all but written off by many at this stage, a casual dismissal that ignores or rejects numerous wonderful films. Perhaps being unburdened by the new whizzkid and "next Orson Welles" labels attached to him in his early efforts would allow Bogdanovich to produce some of his best work, often under troubled circumstances and rather sadly few seemed to notice.

Saint Jack (1979) and They All Laughed (1981), two of his finest films, fell completely under the radar due to legal troubles and botched distribution and were very difficult to see for long periods but are well worth seeking out.

Saint Jack (1979)

They All Laughed (1981)

There's many other excellent films to his name that are overdue for a reappraisal including Noises Off... (1992 - for me the finest of his comedies), The Thing Called Love (1993) and The Cat's Meow (2001). All of these are testament to his great rapport and generosity with actors and it's worth remembering just how many performers did some of their best work under Bogdanovich's direction. Besides Academy Award winning performances by Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman and Tatum O'Neal in his films, the likes of John Ritter, Colleen Camp, Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott and Christopher Reeve all did tremendous character work and showcased their comic skills like never before when working with him.

The Cat's Meow (2001)

In Texasville (1990) he returned to the setting and characters of The Last Picture Show with the sort of maturity and grace that seems to have gained currency in recent years in the films of such veterans as Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Nobuhiko Obayashi (Hanagatami), John Boorman (Queen and Country) and Clint Eastwood (The Mule, Cry Macho). Some saw it as symbolic of Bogdanovich's dwindling status but I find it to be an extremely sincere and moving followup. Of all the belated sequels to New Hollywood classics that appeared in 1990 (The Two Jakes, Rocky V, The Exorcist III, The Godfather Part III) it feels like the most erudite and poignant in relation to its predecessor. The film's reckoning with the past is filled with loss, regret and nostalgia but also an acceptance of the passage of time that harkens back to films like The Magnificent Ambersons, Lola Montes, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Robin and Marian.

Texasville (1990)

New features became less frequent but each new addition to his filmography became a major event to fans like myself. The very existence of 2014's She's Funny That Way (much like James L. Brooks's How Do You Know (2010), Warren Beatty's The Rules Don't Apply (2016) and Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2017)) feels like a miracle of sorts, a strange anachronism in the cinema of the 2010s, and there are now stories that Bogdanovich's preferred cut of the film (titled Squirrels to the Nuts) does in fact exist.* I've also heard about a longer cut of Texasville that was once available on Laserdisc. I'd love to see it get some sort of restoration.

He was a tireless devotee of cinema even through personal tragedy, bankruptcy and scandal. His ongoing efforts to get Welles's final film The Other Side of the Wind put together and given a belated release (courtesy of Netflix) in 2018 in a strange way brought his career full circle. The same year he gave us his final work as a director, The Great Buster: A Celebration, an affectionate tribute to one of the icons of comedy and silent cinema. Bogdanovich's own life and career was a remarkable and at times troubling story in its own right, in which a film enthusiast turned critic would go on to become a notable film historian and director whose contribution to film culture is incalculable.

R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022)

Recommended links:

*James Kenney on the unreleased version of Bogdanovich's last film

2017 Q&A with Bogdanovich following a screening of They All Laughed (from metrograph.com)

Tribute by Joseph McBride (from WellesNet)

Obituary by Glenn Kenny (from Decider.com)

Article by Kyle Smith (from National Review)

Tributes to Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

Peter Tonguette remembers Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

The Connection to Old Hollywood (from RogerEbert.com)

Peter Bogdanovich in memoriam (from The Pink Smoke podcast)

Peter Bogdanovich R.I.P. (from The Lamp magazine)

Peter Bogdanovich Recommends (YouTube Channel)

Peter Bogdanovich discusses David Fincher's film Mank (from Decider.com)

How Peter Bogdanovich shaped the backstory of modern cinema (from The New Yorker)

Bogdanovich responds to the 2012 Sight & Sound poll

Trivia:

Despite his doubts about the validity of conducting a survey of "the greatest films", Bogdanovich did contribute a ballot of his top ten films for the 1972 Sight & Sound poll. He mentioned that he had favourite directors rather than favourite films, as the list demonstrates: