Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a two-disc “Director’s Choice” DVD last week that contains two Peter Bogdanovich films — the classic “Last Picture Show” that put the 32-year-old neophyte director at the top of the Hollywood heap in 1971 and “Nickelodeon,” the 1976 flop that capped a period of shocking decline from which Bogdanovich’s career has never fully recovered.
Few filmmakers have fallen so far so fast as Bogdanovich did in the mid-1970s, after three smash hits in a row had established him as one of the brightest talents of that era of exciting young American directors.
The critic-turned-director received an Oscar nomination for “Picture Show” and followed the film with two hugely successful comedies in just two years’ time — “What’s Up Doc?” (1972) and “Paper Moon” (1973).
In 1973, Bogdanovich’s name was right beside those of Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola and William Friedkin on the list of young outsiders who were redefining Hollywood moviemaking.
But, the director quickly lost his way after “Paper Moon.” He divorced his wife (and brilliant production designer) Polly Platt after a flagrant affair with “Picture Show” ingenue Cybill Shepherd. Bogdanovich went on to make two of the most misbegotten films in the history of Hollywood — the 1974 “Daisy Miller” in which Shepherd was hopelessly inadequate as the Henry James heroine and then the 1975 Cole Porter musical “At Long Last Love” that co-starred Shepherd and Burt Reynolds (neither of whom could sing or dance).
During this period Bogdanovich turned down the chance to direct “Chinatown” (1974) — that decision combined with his earlier rejection of “The Godfather” (1972) made Hollywood question his sanity.
Desperate for a comeback, Bogdanovich instead had another major box-office failure with “Nickelodeon” despite the presence of two major male stars of that decade, Reynolds and Ryan O’Neal.
Bogdanovich has long believed that the studio decision not to allow him to film “Nickelodeon” in black-and-white — as he did with “Last Picture Show” — was a fatal error on the part of the Columbia Pictures management.
All these years later, Bogdanovich has used computer technology to strip the color from “Nickelodeon” and come up with a crisp new black-and-white version of the 33-year-old movie (this was much more complicated than simply turning a knob and removing the color — the film was reworked shot by shot and you would never guess that it was not filmed in B&W).
The movie does look better and feel truer to the silent movie era in B&W than it does in the rather garish original color print (the DVD contains both versions).
Sadly, the movie itself is still a labored dud, with painfully broad acting by Reynolds and O’Neal (and a rare bum performance by the wonderful character actor Brian Keith).
Bogdanovich intended to use Shepherd in the female lead, but reportedly the studio nixed that notion due to the couple’s bad publicity and two high profile flops. In an act of perverse self-sabotage Bogdanovich used a model named Jane Hitchcock in the part. She received special “and introducing…” billing in the credits but delivered a performance of shocking flatness that killed much of the intended romance and comedy in the a of struggling filmmakers and performers at the dawn of Hollywood moviemaking. (Hitchcock made one more film before returning to modeling).
The new DVD is a fascinating but failed attempt to salvage a famous flop — by re-packaging it with “The Last Picture Show,” Bogdanovich has heightened the sad deficiencies of “Nickelodeon.”
