What Critics Got Wrong About Peter Bogdanovich
By Harv Bishop
A generation of film critics wrote off filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich. They were flat out wrong.
Although many of Bogdanovich’s best films were released in the 1970s — one of cinemas greatest decades — his work was condescendingly dismissed by many critics as imitative of the past cinematic masters like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles.
The 70s was bookended by Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971) and Saint Jack (1979). But in between those classics he was unfairly treated as an Icarus-like figure, a victim of too much Hollywood success who needed to be brought back to earth. After Paper Moon (1973) critics trashed his still worthy films, including the underrated Daisy Miller (1974) and Nickelodeon (1976).
In contrast, French New Wave filmmakers such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were lionized for cinematic quotes and conscious homages to past masters. There was a clear double-standard. In interviews, Bogdanovich was open about instances of his homages, such as the inspiration from Buster Keaton for the What’s Up, Doc? chase sequence.
Now there is major reassessment of Bogdanovich’s work with new books, acclaim from a new generation of filmmakers (including Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach), and a new comprehensive TCM documentary podcast about his life and work.
What a new generation of film afficionados are discovering today is borne out by my graduate school research in 1983/84. Having long admired Bogdanovich’s work, and being skeptical of the critical consensus of the time, I did a comprehensive analysis of his films from Targets (1968) through They All Laughed (1980) and compared each with a sizeable sample of work by Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks and Welles.
For Bogdanovich I looked at Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up, Doc? (1972), Paper Moon (1973), Daisy Miller (1974), Saint Jack (1979) and They All Laughed (1980). At Long Last Love (1975) and Nickelodeon (1976) were not included because they weren’t available on video and I couldn’t locate 16 mm versions. I obtained 16 mm copies of Daisy Miller and Saint Jack.
For comparison, I analyzed substantial parts of some of the films cited by critics as influences on Bogdanvich: Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Quiet Man (1952); Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951); Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); and Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), Ball of Fire (1941), and I Was a Male War Bride (1949). I directly compared the filmmakers’ styles in a comprehensive analysis of sequences with similar settings, action, and content. I used additional data — both published and unpublished — by Barry Salt, a UK film school scholar who pioneered statistical analysis of film grammar, and the film theorists and academics David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson.
How comprehensive was my study? Inspired by Salt’s method I tracked every single shot in every then-available Bogdanovich film. Each shot was classified by type (static, tracking, tilt, pan, etc.), framing (long, medium, close-up, extreme close-up, etc.), edit transitions, shot duration, characters in the shot, and the actions of the plot within the shot. The only way I was able to do this with VHS tapes was to buy one of the first expensive VCRs to have slow-motion capabilities. Video and 16 mm can distort the original theatrical framing, but that was compensated for in the coding. This massive amount of data was then coded on spreadsheets that in effect were diagrams of the flow of every shot, sequence, and film. The same was done for sections of the classic era films for comparisons to Bogdanovich. The multiple codes for each shot were then typed by hand into punch cards and run through a statistical program via massive computers that looked like a set from an early James Bond film.
The method allowed for comprehensive analysis both in the big picture and specific details.
‘Coulda been worse’
Making movies has always been a hazardous occupation, with directors in and out of favor. It uses people up. Ill-informed critics wanting to peg winners and losers don’t help. Bogdanovich returned to box office form in the 80s. As Sonny said to Sam the Lion in The Last Picture Show, “Coulda been worse.” Sam replies “Yeah. You can say that about nearly everything, I guess.”
As for the 70s, I found that critics tended to focus on deliberate, brief cinematic quotes — conscious and intentional homages to past masters within films — and then blow those up into generalizations for whole films. The line went something like this: Targets is Bogdanovich’s Hitchcock film, The Last Picture Show is his Ford/Hawks film, What’s Up, Doc? is his Hawks screwball comedy, Paper Moon is his 30s Ford film, and Daisy Miller his Welles film.
My data showed that those perceptions were nonsense.
Bogdanovich has a unique, consistent visual style both within and across films that looks nothing like that of Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks or Welles.
The following are a few of the many examples I explored.
J.J. Liggera wrote in a 1981 issue of Literature/Film Quarterly that Bogdanovich’s “visual vocabulary” in Daisy Miller (1973) “recalls much from Welles … [including] minimal use of close-ups in order to place the characters in their environment.” In fact, aggregate close shots in Daisy Miller were well over half of the shots in the film, the highest percentage of any Bogdanovich film that I analyzed.
I compared Targets’ drive-in sequence with the amusement park sequences in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, based on Bogdanovich citing it as an inspiration. There were some statistical similarities — the highest found in the study — but also differences. This shows that Bogdanovich’s understanding of films — both his and others — makes his assessments more accurate than the critics. The differences are significant. The overall visual style of the Targets drive-in sequence more closely resembles Bogdanovich’s own films than those of Hitchcock. Both Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and Bogdanovich’s Targets use the camera in different ways driven by the stories the sequences tell. There are more close shots in Strangers on a Train as the focus is on interpersonal confrontation. There are more long shots and establishing shots in Targets to build suspense about the presence of a sniper at the drive-in. The far fewer close shots are reserved for when customers and employees become aware of the sniper and try to warn each other as well as in the climatic confrontation between Boris Karloff and the sniper. Bogdanovich effectively uses his minimal close shots to show isolated spectators shut inside their cars to build suspense.
I also conducted a comparison between fight sequences in Ford’s The Quiet Man and Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon. Both are played to comedic effect, but there the similarities end. In the climax of The Quiet Man, American boxer Sean Thornton (John Wayne) battles Squire “Red” Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen) to prove his love for Will’s sister.
Ford’s sequences use mostly long shots showing both fighters and spectators in full frame. Ford emphasizes longer takes and minimal camera movement. When the camera moves it is usually in quick pans to keep punches or falls within the frame. This also allows Ford to keep the actors properly framed without resorting to a cut. All the shots stay on one side of a 180-degree axis. There are occasional cuts to spectators, or the fighters’ reactions after punches or having buckets of water thrown on them to recover from a punch. These reaction shots are minimal and not true reverse angles.
In Paper Moon, Bogdanovich’s long shots for the fight between Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) and Leroy (Randy Quaid) use long tracking pans in a pronounced circular arc movement to provide a mobile point-of-view perspective without necessitating a cut. Bogdanovich also employs reverse angle cuts in six of his seven takes, five of which are timed to the rhythm of punches, kicks, and falls. Recall that Ford keeps all this type of action in a single frame with the camera further back and used no strict reverse angle cuts.
My 207-page thesis provides many other examples from Hawks and Welles’ movies as well, but you get the idea.
My data shows that the negative comparisons by critics were just plain wrong or generalized, knee jerk, and highly suspect conclusions based on superficial resemblances. Ford worked in black and white and gosh, wouldn’t you know it, The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon are also filmed in black and white. Ford’s Grapes of Wrath was set in rural Depression-era America and so is Paper Moon. On those slender threads some of the best films of the 1970s were judged and found wanting.
In a 1977 book, Authorship and Narrative in the Cinema: Issues in Aesthetics and Criticism, William Luhr and Peter Lehman found that many popular film critics rarely support their claims. But there was no excuse for scholarly writers to swallow whole the uninformed stereotypes of popular critics. Liggera’s article on Daisy Miller stated Bogdanovich’s “talents are culled from and dependent on film history and nostalgia.”
You wouldn’t need the detailed study I did to determine that a Bogdanovich shot with a fixed axis tilt isn’t comparable to a Welles shot with a perpendicular crane movement. Or to refute the claim that Bogdanovich used minimal close shots in Daisy Miller when more than half (63.3%) of his film was composed in close shots. The film features the only recorded instance of Bogdanovich employing a drastic lens distortion in my study. It may or may not be inspired by Welles, but it does not justify an entire film being branded as Wellesian.
Some writers did reject the stereotypical anti-Bogdanovich trend in the 80s. Myron Meisel, a film and theatre critic, and later documentary producer, wrote insightful commentary about Bogdanovich’s films. An essay about They All Laughed perceptively explored the relationship of camera movements to different characters. In 1983, Barry Putterman, a freelance critic and author of multiple books on film and television, wrote in American Directors Volume II that Bogdanovich’s films often portrayed “gentle-dreamer-observers” who are tested by social realities and the characters they encounter. Examples include Timothy Bottoms’ Sonny in The Last Picture Show, Ryan O’Neal’s Howard Bannister in What’s Up, Doc?, Barry Brown’s Frederick Winterbourne in Daisy Miller, Ben Gazzara’s Saint Jack, and of course John Ritter’s private detective Charles Rutledge in the now cult favorite They All Laughed.
Film technique can’t be considered in isolation. Analysis must also consider the director’s passions and thematic concerns, their unique take on the world as it relates to the technique. As one example, I believe Bogdanovich’s frequent use of close-up shots enhance audience empathy with these “dreamer-observer” characters and allow the expression of their non-verbal emotions in a way easily read by the audience. Coupled with point-of-view shots, they allow the audience to enter the characters’ private world. Bogdanovich once said Timothy Bottoms’ eyes in The Last Picture Show conveyed an “epic sad” as if they carried the sorrow of the ages.
My data confirmed that none of Bogdanovich’s consistent thematic concerns, or consistent, unique visual style across all the variables studied are directly comparable to Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, or Welles. I repeat, none. Whose films do Bogdanovich’s films most closely resemble? Other Bogdanovich films.
All the critical, unfair nonsense about imitation obscured serious study of Bogdanovich as a unique film artist for too long. This is being rectified with each passing year. It is beyond overdue.
For more enlightened contemporary takes on Peter Bogdanovich watch for Peter Tonguett’s Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director due in mid-July 2020 from the University of Kentucky Press and Ben Slater’s Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore (2006). The latter is now hard to find, but available through the author. TCM’s The Plot Thickens podcast’s first season, hosted by Ben Mankiewicz, features a seven-part interview with the filmmaker entitled I’m Still Peter Bogdanovich.
