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The Essentials: Peter Bogdanovich’s 9 Best Films

READ MORE: Peter Bogdanovich Talks Blu-Ray Recut Of ‘At Long Last Love,’ Cybill Shepherd, And Billy Wilder

Daisy Miller“Daisy Miller” (1974)
More here because it’s essential to an understanding of Bogdanovich’s career than necessarily because it’s his greatest film, his Henry James adaptation certainly has more spark and verve to it than the same year’s deathly dull “The Great Gatsby,” with which it competed in the “handsomely mounted period literary adaptation” stakes. While it’s tempting to ascribe many of the film’s issues to the source novel (Daisy is explicitly a shallow, capricious, and not terribly interesting character, even as written on the page), there are directorial choices on Bogdanovich’s part that falter too, especially if we consider he was, at this point, coming off an all-time, hall-of-fame, one-two-three of “The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon.” Perhaps he can be forgiven for imagining he was infallible. But “Daisy Miller,” which he made under the auspices of The Director’s Company, a short-lived experiment in an auteur-led production company that he founded with Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin, feels like a much more constricted film than his last several had been, and while Cybill Shepherd attracted a lot of the critical ire at the time, it’s not so much her fault as it is Bogdanovich’s that she’s so irritatingly unlikable in the role. In that, in fact, she’s actually pretty great as Daisy, delivering her silly, girly flirtatious doublespeak like she’s a screwball heroine, and perhaps even giving the character more charm than she deserves. But you cannot escape the knowledge that Bogdanovich was absolutely captivated by Shepherd  the camera practically fawns over her, and treats her with a dazzled adoration that those of us not actually blinded by love find a little puzzling: why are we supposed to be so entranced with this callow little idiot? Barry Brown plays the befuddled suitor through whose eyes we see the story, and Eileen Brennan, as always, enlivens the film in a non-comedic role as the stentorian society matron who is scandalized by Daisy’s inappropriate behavior, but even they, and a great Cloris Leachman as Daisy’s ineffectual mother, are in orbit around Shepherd’s Daisy, who is asked to do little more than chatter, flirt, and twirl her parasol. But while curiously devoid of subtext or satire, the film is gorgeous to look at, dressed in resplendent finery, and is infinitely better than the musical misfire “At Long Last Love” that followed, taking Bogdanovich’s Shepherd obsession to its event horizon.

Saint Jack“Saint Jack” (1979)
If much of Bogdanovich’s output feels slightly out of step with the experimental, counter-cultural vibe of his contemporaries’ work, perhaps the closest he ever hewed to his generational zeitgeist was with this 1979 picture, based on the Paul Theroux novel of the same name. Of course, part of that similarity is in surface detail: the film stars Cassavetes regular Ben Gazzara and is shot by Wim Wenders (and later Jim Jarmusch) collaborator Robby Müller  all three would reteam on “They All Laughed.” But “Saint Jack” is probably Bogdanovich’s loosest film, the one that feels most Cassavetian in execution, in which classical plotting, let alone the kind of manic screwballishness that characterizes the director’s comedies, is entirely absent in favor of a low-key, episodic character portrait embedded in a gritty, exotic, and relatively little-filmed locale. Gazzara plays Jack, an affable American expatriate, who’s been living so long in Singapore that he’s part of the scenery in its Red Light district, where he runs a hotel/brothel that caters to visiting tourists. Unfolding over the course of a few years, what structure the film has is lent by the recurring character of William Leigh (a superb Denholm Elliott), a somewhat naive Englishman who comes by once a year from Hong Kong to do the books for Jack’s Chinese bosses. As unlikely as it seems, the worldly, gregarious Jack finds a lovely understated sense of fellow feeling with the quiet, starchily decent William, perhaps because the latter seems to fit into the mold of the brash Brit expat even less than he does into Jack’s seedy milieu of prostitution and protection rackets. Things change, life happens: Jack forms an attachment to one particular woman, runs afoul of a Triad, and is dispossessed, forcing him into an uneasy alliance with a suave CIA agent (Bogdanovich). But often we don’t see how these things play out, as Bogdanovich assembles the film impressionistically, so that it becomes less a linear narrative and more a thoughtful exploration into the quandary at the heart of Jack’s expat experience: is it possible to truly belong somewhere where you will always be a foreigner?

They All Laughed“They All Laughed” (1981)
The shaggiest of shaggy-dog comedies, Peter Bogdanovich’s under-appreciated and underseen early ‘80s romantic comedy received something of a revisionist reappreciation in the mid aughts thanks to the DVD release of the long out-of-print film, a touring theatrical release, and plaudits given by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and Noah Baumbach among others  all of whom Bogdanovich has worked with in some capacity since. But with 20th Century Fox trying to bury it at the time, and the director’s attempts to self-release it a year later not proving very successful, it’s still possibly the most underseen title on this list, and if it’s not quite a classic on the level of his greatest pictures, it certainly doesn’t deserve the lingering opprobrium associated with it. Taking its title from the George and Ira Gershwin song of the same name, Bogdanovich’s quirky ninth effort centers on a trio of private detectives (John Ritter, Ben Gazzara, and Blaine Novak) investigating the infidelities of two different women, the wife of a European tycoon (Audrey Hepburn, in one of her last performances, coaxed out of semi-retirement by Bogdanovich) and another New Yorker (Dorothy Stratten, whose death would overshadow the film; she and Bogdanovich were seeing each other when she was murdered by her estranged husband). Of course, all the detectives fall for the women they’re tailing — one going so far to try and cheat on his own wife, a country singer played by Colleen Camp — and mishaps, misunderstandings, and hijinks ensue.  Co-starring Patti Hansen as a taxi driver who roves in and out of the plot, “They All Laughed” isn’t quite hilarious, but it is charming, amusing, and features winning warmth. Shot by the great Robbie Müller, its sunny, lensed-on-the-New-York-streets vibe adds an endearing off-the-cuff element as well (and it looks killer in 35mm). Bogdanovich would become lifelong friends with most of this cast (Ritter was one of his closest buddies), and it shows; its fetching qualities trump its baggy, wandering plot. “They All Laughed” is certainly not a perfect film, but its homespun quality, palpable camaraderie, and playfully loose performances make for a movie that’s easy to harbor deep affection for nonetheless.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. Nickelodeon (at least the director\’s cut with black and white cinematography as Bogdanovich intended) is kind of an overlooked movie about making movies, in my opinion. Of course I haven\’t seen all these titles so I\’ll have to get to it!

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