Paper Moon

Let us now consider the roller coaster career of Peter Bogdanovich. In the early '70s he was in the upper tier of American directors. He had three critically-acclaimed hits in a row: The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon. He was the toast of the town. Then he hit the rocks, with three flops in a row: Daisy Miller, Nickelodeon, and At Long Last Love, which I've never seen but is supposed to be atrocious. He had a decently reviewed film after that, Saint Jack, but then made They All Laughed, which was a monumental disaster, and he pretty much disappeared, only to surface every once in a while on DVD extras as a film expert.

But that's not entirely true--Bogdanovich continued to make movies, and some of them were pretty good, like Mask in 1985. But he never hit the heights he had those three years in the '70s, which ended with Paper Moon.

I watched Paper Moon last night and was enchanted (I think I saw it many moons ago). It's a buddy film, and shows how elastic that genre can be, as this pairing is a con man and a nine-year-old girl who may or may not be his daughter. It starred Ryan O'Neal, who was a big star at the time, and his nine-year-old daughter, Tatum, who had never acted before. She ended up winning an Oscar, and remains the youngest person ever to win a competitive Oscar.

The movie begins with young O'Neal, as Addie Loggins, at her mother's funeral in a small town in Kansas. It is the 1930s. She has been orphaned. Her mother, it seems, was a woman who had many gentleman friends, with Ryan O'Neal, as Moses Pray, one of them. He attends the funeral (we learn what we need to know about him when he pilfers some flowers from a nearby grave) and is asked to take young Addie to her aunt in St. Joseph, Missouri. He reluctantly agrees, and plans on putting the child on a train, but makes money by getting $200 from the brother of the man who killed Addie's mother in an auto accident. But Addie overhears this deal, and wants her money, or she will go straight to a policeman. O'Neal is stuck with the girl, and commits con jobs to make the money.

His most common trick is to pose as a Bible salesman, and calls on recently widowed women, telling them their departed husband had purchased a Bible. Inevitably the widows buy it at a marked-up price. Addie picks up on this, and is soon assisting in the con, sizing up how much the widows can afford. It soon becomes apparent that she has more brains than O'Neal, and they make their way across Kansas pulling small swindles.

Things go bad for Addie when O'Neal meets a hoochie-coochie dancer named Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn, also nominated for an Oscar) and takes her along. Kahn, as usual, steals every scene she's in. She has a teenage black girl for a maid (P.J. Johnson), who when Addie asks if Kahn puts out, says, "Like a gum machine." The two conspire to break Kahn and O'Neal up, and get Johnson the money she needs to go home.

The last act has the pair selling a bootlegger his own whiskey, which is a problem since the bootlegger's brother is the town sheriff (both are played by John Hillerman). Some chase scenes are involved, and O'Neal meets up with a family of hillbillies including a very young Randy Quaid. The film ends with the two on the road in a beat-up truck, a ribbon of highway stretching before them.

The film was based on a novel called Addie Pray. It was originally attached to John Huston and Paul Newman, but ended up with Bogdanovich. It is almost a note-perfect movie, with not a bad shot and a light-hearted, sentimental tone. The black and white photography by László Kovács is exquisite, recalling the depression-era photographs of Walker Evans--there are many stark scenes of single buildings set against a wide-open vista of prairie (the film was shot on location). It is very nostalgic, with period songs (including the title one) and radio shows, like Jack Benny and Fibber McGee and Molly.

But what makes the movie sing is the chemistry between the O'Neals. Though Ryan O'Neal was not the greatest actor--Newman would have been much better--Tatum is amazing. At first she has a serious frown on her face and you wonder if she can even talk, but once she gets into the confidence games she emerges from a cocoon. At times she looks like a midget passing for a child, as when she is sitting in bed smoking a cigarette.

Tatum O'Neal's career wouldn't last very long, and Paper Moon would be the apex. She did make The Bad News Bears, which was a big hit, and then Little Darlings in 1980, but after that was mostly known for marrying tennis star John McEnroe. She has acted continuously over the years, with that picking up after her divorce from McEnroe, but she has also had some drug addiction problems.

So, for Bogdanovich and Tatum O'Neal, Paper Moon was something of a watershed. It is a wonderful film, and Tatum gave one of the greatest juvenile performances in the history of movies.