I almost swerved the Honda into a gaggle of cyclists when I saw The Last Picture Show on the marquee of the Laurelhurst earlier this week: Peter Bogdonavich’s 1971 adaptation of the Larry McMurtry novel might be my favorite film (alongside Five Easy Pieces) of Hollywood’s director-driven “New Wave” era of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Picture Show was the first major film to have been shot in black and white (at the urgings of Orson Wells) in over a decade, and stars a remarkably young (and hot) Cybil Shepard and Jeff Bridges as teenagers on the cusp of adulthood in a choky, dying Texas town during the Korean War. It’s an amazing character study, full of sexual tensions, frustrations, secrets, boredom, and mystery, told with a frank directness jumps out sharply from the polite conventions of small town, black and white films set in the early ’50s.

Thanks to the Laurelhurst and their “Films from the ’70s in July” series for screening it.

the trailer: