What's Up, Doc? Is a Hysterical Tribute to Screwball Comedies

Filmmakers are versatile artists. Us film critics (and I'm as guilty of it as anybody) sometimes like to box in directors into a certain type. Martin Scorsese only does gangster movies, Richard Linklater only does slice-of-life indies, Akira Kurosawa only does jidaigeki pictures. In reality, these three filmmakers, and really any director, are usually capable of making far more than just one type of movie. You know who serves as a great example of the elasticity of a filmmaker? Director Peter Bogdanovich. Back in 1971, he did a relentlessly bleak portrait of a suffocating small town entitled The Last Picture Show. After such a grim motion picture, its no surprise he opted for something lighter for his directorial follow-up.

The Last Picture Show Fully Commits To A Melancholy Tone, Resulting In A Haunting Movie

Teenagers finally got to be widely recognized as a source of both revenue and storytelling in American pop culture in the 1950's which meant, because nostalgia is such a cornerstone of our pop culture. it was only a matter of time before art depicting teenagers inhabiting that specific pivotal era were created. The 1970's were bursting with pop culture that depicted teenager characters getting into adventures from Grease to Happy Days (American Graffiti was another 1970's pop culture entity that exploited nostalgia for teenage years, though that one was set in the 1960's). Most of these films were upbeat happy-go-lucky fare that looked back on 1950's teenagers with rose-colored glasses.