The Last Picture Show

The evening screening of The Last Picture Show on April 9 at Muranów cinema will be preceded by a 15-minute TEDx-style talk led by Maciej Jarkowiec.

Anarene, Texas is surrounded by pastures and oil wells. The town is dead. Every once in a while, an eighteen-wheeler rolls across the national highways’ crossroads. The wind blows off the prairie and chases tumbleweeds down the street. On Saturday nights, the town’s youths park their cars near the pond at the edge of South Street. She takes off her bra and hangs it on the wing mirror. He rubs his frozen hands together before placing them on her breasts. 

Larry McMurtry, Texas’ greatest writer, was born and spent his entire life in a town just like this. He has published more than 40 books, whose film adaptations have won 13 Oscars. The Last Picture Show – an anti-western based on McMurty’s novel of the same title – is a story about growing up in Texas in the 1950s. It recounts the fate of Wild West towns a hundred years after the cowboys. You can pretend to fall in love and try to run away with your sweetheart, but by the time you reach the next, equally hopeless, town, the law will catch up with you.

Maciej Jarkowiec

Peter Bogdanovich (1939–2022) was a key figure of New Hollywood, a director, critic, and passionate film historian. His breakthrough The Last Picture Show (1971) earned Oscar nominations and became a poignant portrayal of small-town America. He also directed Paper Moon (1973) and What’s Up, Doc? (1972), elegantly paying homage to classic Hollywood genres. His films were marked by a deep understanding of cinema history and a keen narrative sensibility.