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Reviews
All Fall Down (1962)
Justifiably forgotten
Few escape this film with their reputations intact. Angela Lansbury, whose subsequent roles redeem her, experiments here with playing women much older than herself and a stereotype type she mastered in "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Something for Everyone." Karl Malden was from Central Casting here in an adequate performance in an unchallenging role. Brandon de Wilde never grew into a good actor due to his death at a young age. In this film his performance is wooden and, except for his good looks, unpromising. Warren Beatty seems just too obsessed with himself to have any power. He is an ingenue. Eva Marie Saint is the star of this second rate drama. She is electric from her first appearance but the role isn't up to her talent. The supporting actresses are excellent. I can't complain about Frankenheimer's direction. The story isn't convincing and Inge's screenplay is desperate.
Texasville (1990)
West Texas - fiction or reality
In New York in 1971 my best friend killed himself shortly after we had seen "The Last Picture Show." He had been born and raised in Slaton, Texas, a Panhandle town that strongly resembles Larry McMurtry's fictional Anarene. The movie had been the determining factor in his suicide, and I had found it almost as powerful as he had. McMurtry's characters and the actors who portrayed them were so skillfully handled by Peter Bogdanovich that I firmly believed most of them to be locals and not professionals. I knew these people all too well. Perhaps you can understand why I avoided the sequel "Texasville."
Upon seeing it twenty-eight years after its release the original seemed like yesteryear. The contrast from film noir to full color was the equivalent of waking from a dream. I wanted to resist this new reality but the continuity is too good. There they all were - Sonny, Jacy, Duane, Ruth, Lester, and Genevieve. Others had died, moved away, or just disappeared. There is no kick-in-the-balls in the sequel, but there is a hard core realism based on disillusionment, disappointment, and monotony, all concealed in a clever pessimistic comedy. McMurtry did the same after "Terms of Endearment " with the sequel "Evening Star."
Texasville, the fictional original settlement in Archer County, is a metaphor for the illusion of the past, a two-dimension set that no one cares to remember. The film's lack of success at the box office should not be interpreted that it is a failure, but that the times had changed drastically in the subsequent twenty years, and what once seemed like almost heroic values have all evaporated. There is no Sam the Lion in this Anarene.
I don't think you can see "Texasville" without knowing its predecessor. But if you have, then you will see this film as a brilliant follow-up, if not a final conclusion.
H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)
Two excellent performances raise this mundane plot.
Both Robert Young and Hedi Lamarr give performances noticeable for their timing and naturalness. Lamarr, who is basically miscast in her role, really shines as an actress. Young is charming and winsome, and holds the film despite Lamarr's beauty. There is also a brief appearance by the very young Ava Gardner in an uncredited walk-on.