Goodbye Peter Bogdanovich, the director’s films that we will not forget

A little sorry that, at the news of the death of Peter Bogdanovich, who passed away on January 6 at the age of 82, many googled his name to find out who he was and what movie he directed. Peter Bogdanovich was one of the few directors to pass from the world of journalistic criticism to action on the field, which allowed him to develop a refined style capable of remaining impressed by the clarity of the scenes and, above all, by the never-ending construction. banal that it was also a discreet homage to Hawks and Welles, his idols when he wrote. Although Bogdanovich actually belonged to the so-called New Hollywood, it is evident that his films were closer to the glorious Golden Age: The last show (1971) e Paper Moon (1973), shot in black and white decades after the format went out of fashion, demonstrate the nostalgic and romantic gaze of a man who, in his cinema, has always put his heart as well as his head.

From the heartwarming elegy for a fictional town in Texas to a road movie set in the period of the Great Depression starring a charming con man played by Ryan O’Neal, much of Peter Bogdanovich’s filmography could be read as an attempt to keep the comedy of yesteryear alive: While Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Michael Cimino looked ahead, Bogdanovich lit a tealight for Old Hollywood, struggling to keep his legacy alive. Despite many believe The last show his brightest masterpiece – the wonderful story of a suburban room that is about to close its doors and the friendship of little Sonny and Duane, with a very young but already full of charisma Jeff Bridges – Bogdanovich cannot fail to be remembered for his contribution to cinema as an art tout court, as a means to which Peter approached on tiptoe, appearing, over the years, in dozens of documentaries that asked him for an opinion, an opinion and a look at where that vehicle was going and what stages it had reached.

Although his subsequent films did not achieve the same unanimity of consensus as The last show, his style has managed to leave its mark especially in directors such as Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher and Wes Anderson, who have included in their films references to those comic and classic worlds that his genius has always managed to pay in the right way: not with the passivity and assertiveness of the followers, but with the revitalizing drive of the debtors of the past who seek to make an active contribution to the renewal of the present. Bogdanovich did not deny himself anything: he gave the Oscar to Tatum O’Neal for his performance in Paper Moon; hto dealt with a scandal of the murder of Dorothy Stratten, protagonist of his … And everyone laughed (1981), by her husband jealous of the relationship he had with her during filming; and he juggled with the television medium, directing also in a couple of episodes of I Soprano. His biggest dream came true, perhaps, in 2018: be able to see The other side of the wind, the unfinished film of his myth Orson Welles to which he collaborated, on Netflix. The lover of classic cinema and the streaming platform: a love that would have been nice to see born.