The First Picture Shows

By R.S.

NICKELODEON

Directed by PETER BOGDANOVICH

Screenplay by W.D. RICHTER and PETER BOGDANOVICH

While pursuing his career as a director, Peter Bogdanovich has been an assiduous and romantic collector of early Hollywood reminiscences. This interest sets him apart from his fellow film craftsmen, who rarely betray the slightest knowledge of their medium's past and who have in the last year or so trashed all kinds of potentially interesting material (Gable and Lombard, W.C. Fields, the early screen cowboys in Hearts of the West, not to mention the hapless Rin Tin Tin) while seeking a market in movie nostalgia that has so far been more apparent than real.

Nickelodeon makes use of a number of incidents reported to Bogdanovich by such pioneers as Directors Raoul Walsh and Allan Dwan. But more important to the film's relative success is the director's warm, but not sloppy feeling for the very earliest period in film history. In telling the story of a tangle-footed lawyer (Ryan O'Neal) who, in the course of fleeing an outraged client, literally falls into show business and accidentally becomes a director, the film perceives that the distinguishing characteristic of those pioneering days was an innocence derived from the fact that the stakes in the game, both financially and intellectually, were absurdly low.

When Bogdanovich is concentrating on atmosphere, showing a small independent company making up stories in order to take advantage of the locations, or fighting off gunmen sent out by the competition, his picture has a pleasant authenticity. There is also a nicely handled romantic triangle involving O'Neal, Burt Reynolds as a star and Newcomer Jane Hitchcock as a comically nearsighted actress. What goes wrong with the picture is an overreliance on slapstick, the nearly lost silent film technique, as a device to evoke the spirit of the time. Bogdanovich apparently does not quite trust his film's softer side to grab interest, especially in the early going.

He really didn't have to, since the growth of the story is away from the comic mode toward something more rueful, and more interesting, in mood. Bogdanovich ends his film with the 1915 premiere of The Birth of a Nation, the first major American feature-length film, a work of unprecedented scope, cost and profitability. Its success over night made the movies into a serious business. To remain competitive there after required a considerable investment of time and money.

Bogdanovich is right to mourn the passing of the foolishness and charm of the happy-go-lucky flickers: It is too bad that the frantic slapstick of the film's early passages ill prepares one for the ending, vitiating its force. It is by no means a fatal flaw, there being so much about Nickelodeon--including supporting performances by Tatum O'Neal, Brian Keith and Stella Stevens--that is captivating. It is just that the film does not realize all of its potential.

R. S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.