Way before the Andersons (Wes, P.T. and Paul W.S.), Peter Bogdanovich exemplified the film nerd-artiste and this double-disc DVD commemorates the golden moment. The Last Picture Show (1971) was emblematic of the era when Hollywood filmmakers became self-conscious about this legacy. Nickelodeon (1976) was Bogdanovich’s tribute to that history, a sweet slapstick sentimental history of that chaotic 1910-15 period just before D.W. Griffith brought the art to maturity with The Birth of a Nation. Every nuance and ambition, achievement and failure, that today’s moviegoers identify with in the Andersons was already defined by Bogdanovich, a cinematic historian-turned-auteur.
Yet Bogdanovich’s personality slightly tarnishes his gold. This release offers both the color, studio-version of Nickelodeon and a black-and-white director’s cut. Its original theatrical version is best, but Bogdanovich insists on having his way to no avail. This cussedness must explain why his great The Last Picture Show is only offered an over-extended director’s cut, deliberately leaving the shorter, superior theatrical version to oblivion.
Proving his second thought was not best, the B&W tinting of Nickelodeon destroy Lazslo Kovacs’ subtle visual design. The middle California section is a gorgeously devised naturalistic pastiche where the distant horizon is always on view, always at the top of the screen. Using nature as a limitless proscenium, Kovacs added dimension to the pioneering characters’ amorous and physical frolics. A character defines cinema as “pieces of time” and these lovely rhythmic sequences confirm that.
Though lesser-known than the screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? (1972), Nickelodeon ranks alongside it (and 1975’s At Long Last Love)—part of Bogdanovich’s Film-Sensibility Trilogy. Like all his films, they’re affirming; you learn something and they have meaningful content. They’re capricious, meticulous and genuinely-felt: unique examples of the cinema ideal toward which the Andersons strive.
Yet Bogdanovich’s personality slightly tarnishes his gold. This release offers both the color, studio-version of Nickelodeon and a black-and-white director’s cut. Its original theatrical version is best, but Bogdanovich insists on having his way to no avail. This cussedness must explain why his great The Last Picture Show is only offered an over-extended director’s cut, deliberately leaving the shorter, superior theatrical version to oblivion.
Proving his second thought was not best, the B&W tinting of Nickelodeon destroy Lazslo Kovacs’ subtle visual design. The middle California section is a gorgeously devised naturalistic pastiche where the distant horizon is always on view, always at the top of the screen. Using nature as a limitless proscenium, Kovacs added dimension to the pioneering characters’ amorous and physical frolics. A character defines cinema as “pieces of time” and these lovely rhythmic sequences confirm that.
Though lesser-known than the screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? (1972), Nickelodeon ranks alongside it (and 1975’s At Long Last Love)—part of Bogdanovich’s Film-Sensibility Trilogy. Like all his films, they’re affirming; you learn something and they have meaningful content. They’re capricious, meticulous and genuinely-felt: unique examples of the cinema ideal toward which the Andersons strive.
