PAPER MOON

USA | 1973 | DCP | 102 min.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal, Madeline Kahn

Bogdanovich combines the gorgeous black and white photography of The Last Picture Show and the screwball comedy dialogue pace of What’s Up, Doc? to tell the seriocomic tale of a con man (Ryan O’Neal) and his young charge (an Oscar-winning performance from Tatum O’Neal) on the road and evading the authorities in Great Depression era Kansas and Missouri. Laszlo Kovacs cinematography is incandescent and Alvin Sargent’s screenplay (an adaptation of the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown) boasts an authenticity that the lived-in performances serve to highlight. (BR)