Peter Bogdanovich, in the ranks of contemporary American directors, may be the foremost movie fan or the foremost movie plagiarist. Throughout this reminiscence of the early days of the business, he is making reference to this or that in film history (the "wild man" character from James Agee's essay on silent comedy; the ostriches from Howard Hawks's Hatari; a paraphrase of a Jimmy Stewart quotation which gives Bogdanovich's recent book, Pieces of Time, its title; etc.); but he seldom aspires to the educational goals of the true historian. One wouldn't have expected Bogdanovich, of all people, to promote an image of pioneer filmmakers as quaint, goofy, and foolish; but in the opening sequence (Ryan O'Neal, on the run, steps into a bucket -- the first of countless unquestioning imitations of slapstick's hoariest and deadliest gags), one learns to lower the expectations. Near movie's end, Bogdanovich at last communicates a little of his reverence for the art form when he re-creates the Hollywood premiere of Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and he is momentarily in the presence of a genuinely great movie, a gorgeous tinted print of it, and some well-selected extracts. With Burt Reynolds, Stella Stevens, Tatum O'Neal, Brian Keith. (1976) — Duncan Shepherd
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