Peter Bogdanovich was the greatest among the cinephile directors. With him, Hollywood also loses one of its most important chroniclers.
In the early 1960s, the American film industry experienced the greatest crisis in its history. But while the mighty studio system imploded, it met with help from an unexpected source: A group of young cinephilers were passionate about securing the traces of disappearing art and making plans for their future. Similar to the French Nouvelle Vague, which emerged from film criticism ten years earlier, “New Hollywood” was born from it.
As a young film critic and curator of film series at the Museum of Modern Art, Peter Bogdanovich brought the French author’s theory to America. Hollywood’s old masters were often surprised by the knowledge he had amassed about them. And even if they, like John Ford, pretended not to have anything to do with the art that he attested to them, they did put up with it. Nobody conducted more fundamental interviews with pioneers like Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, George Cukor or Alfred Hitchcock than Peter Bogdanovich. His zeal did not stop at the canon that the French had staked out. He dedicated an entire book to the little-noticed founding father of modern narrative film, Allan Dwan.
Gunman in the drive-in theater
When the 29-year-old Bogdanovich was successful as a director himself in 1968 with the Roger Corman production “Movable Targets”, he had attended the best film school in the world. This minimalist horror film about a gunman who ends up holed up in a drive-in theater looks like an artistic manifesto: You didn’t have to reinvent the cinema to revive it. It was enough to celebrate its classic shapes and simple sensations, the beauty of the montage and the plastic characters.
It hardly bothered the old filmmakers, who often became his joys, that they soon recognized their own classics in the works of the ambitious spectacle wearer. His worldwide hit “Is what, Doc?” Was an open homage to Howard Hawks’ legendary screwball comedy “You Don’t Kiss Leopards”. The love of cinema runs like a red thread through Bodgdanovich’s work: In what is perhaps his most important film, “The Last Performance” (1972), the closure of a small-town cinema is the reason for a melancholy group portrait of young adults. In 1990 he drummed up the leading actors for the congenial sequel “Texasville” again. His rogue comedy and affectionate father-daughter story “Paper Moon” exudes the authentic charm of American cinema in the era of its innocence, the 20s and early 30s.
These films were huge hits, but the tide turned in the mid-1970s. Although “Nickelodeon”, his homage to the patent war of the film pioneers of the 10s, is still very attractive today, it was an expensive flop in 1975. The former “golden boy” had casually turned down offers such as “The Godfather”, “Chinatown” or “The Exorcist” – and now suddenly lost his “golden touch” for the producers. Bogdanovich has also been an issue for the tabloid media since he left his wife, the set designer, costume designer and screenwriter Polly Platt, for the young star Cybill Shepherd in 1971.
Now pride and fall seemed to coincide in his career. In fact, Bogdanovich did not seek the public only in favorable moments. I remember when he unexpectedly spoke up from the audience at a screening of “Moving Targets” in Los Angeles. The cinema had actually paid homage to Polly Platt, but the surprise guest hardly wanted her to have a say.
On the other hand, he selflessly committed himself to the directors he admired, especially Orson Welles, who even lived in his house for a while. For decades, Bogdanovich fought for the posthumous completion of the final Welles project. It wasn’t until the streaming channel Netflix finally brought “The Other Side of the Wind” to the public in 2018. Bogdanovich played the up-and-coming talent Brooks Otterlake in this semi-autobiographical portrait of an aging director – an unmistakable homage to himself.
At the time of completion, Bogdanovich could now look back on a career that did not need to shy away from comparison with Welles in terms of changeability, overshadowed by two personal bankruptcies. While he kept afloat with acting roles – for example in 15 “Sopranos” episodes as psychiatrist Dr. Kupferberg – he also succeeded in directing work that was well worth seeing. Even if there were no great successes, they are all worth an encounter. “The Thing Called Love” (1993), a homage to the young, alternative country scene, is particularly likeable: Bogdanovich once again promoted talented young actors: River Phoenix, Samantha Mathis, Delmot Mulroney and Sandra Bullock. His unrecognized film “The Cat’s Meouw” (2001) about a murder in Hollywood in the 1920s is also a pleasure.
You couldn’t love cinema more dearly than Peter Bogdanovich. His work as a writer and director is nothing less than proof of this love. At the age of 82, Peter Bogdanovich died on Thursday at his Los Angeles home.
