Favorite Scenes From A Century Of Cinema - 1

This post begins a series of OTR's favorite scenes from the movies.  We'll  post one a week for three or four months and touch on a wide range of films. They'll appear in no particular order. In fact, a lot of random thought will go into generating the list. This comes from OTR's lifelong enjoyment of the motion picture. Can't say for sure when it all began, but there are vivid memories of watching The War of the Worlds in 1953, lying on a blanket at a drive-in theater and fully expecting martians to emerge from the nearby woods. Now some folks today may think allowing a seven year old to see such a film amounts to child abuse. Perhaps there was some trauma, but considering the outcome these many years later, there was no perceptible permanent damage. Some people he knows may object to that last statement.

In 1971, OTR was a full-time grad student and had a 32 hour-per-week job working midnight to eight in the morning. He didn't have much of a life outside the classroom and the office, and had to wait several years to discover The Last Picture Show. The film is Peter Bogdanovich's masterpiece about coming of age in small-town America in the early 1950s. There is a superb cast, including film debuts by Sybil Shepherd and Randy Quaid. The film won two Academy Awards - Best Supporting Actress (Cloris Leachman) and  Best Supporting Actor (Ben Johnson) - out of eight nominations. Here is Ben Johnson,  a real Oklahoma cowboy turned iconic cowboy actor, as "Sam the Lion" reflecting on change and old times:

The Last Picture Show is a compelling, thought-provoking 118 minutes of film making. It has a wonderful period (1951-53) soundtrack as well.