Remembrance Of Things Past

The Egyptian theatre is having a tribute this weekend to Peter Bogdanovich. This being Hollywood, the man will be there himself.

New, young directors blossomed in the Hollywood of the early 70s. One of the hottest at the time was Bogdanovich. He started off the decade with three critically-favored hits, The Last Picture Show (1971), Paper Moon (1972) and What's Up, Doc? (1973). There was some question about his style, since he loved old movies so much he seemed to be copying them.

Then he made a trio of flops--Daisy Miller (1974), At Long Last Love (1975) and Nickelodeon (1976). Projects became infrequent, usually low budget, and he was never taken as seriously again.

So Nickelodeon, which I saw recently, and which shows tonight in a director's cut, was his last hurrah, even if he didn't know it at the time. It's a love letter to the movie pioneers. The ones who moved out to California (partly to avoid the Patent Trust who tried to shut down small filmmakers) and would simply go out every day and shoot footage in a catch-as-catch-can manner. The climax of the story is when they see D. W. Griffith's Birth Of A Nation and realize their world has changed forever.

It's a great concept for a comedy, it's a great concept for a drama. The early filmmakers were outsized personalities who made up the rules as they went along. I wish I could say Bogdanovich's film is a lost masterpiece, but it just doesn't work. Bogdanovich claims Columbia forced a lot of changes on him, and perhaps his cut is better, but the problem goes deeper. The milieu works, but little else does. Ryan O'Neal and Burt Reynolds could be charming actors, but their characters aren't shown here to good advantage. Worse, the tone of the film is, for the most part, farce, and pretty dopey farce at that.

Bogdanovich is one of the best film historians around, and he was trying to give the audience of taste of the joy and excitement that was going on in the early 1900s. Too bad he can't make the film again. The film is about a lost era, and now that the 70s are a lost era too, he probably has a better sense of perspective.