In the three years that followed the international smash success of WHAT’S UP, DOC?, Peter Bogdanovich had his ups and downs—PAPER MOON (1973) was another big hit, while DAISY MILLER (1974), starring his inamorata Cybill Shepherd, was widely panned and did not do well at the box office. This, the immediate followup, again looked to classic Hollywood for inspiration. Essentially, it is a Cole Porter jukebox musical, incorporating the musical-comedy master’s songs—eighteen of them, in fact—in a wafer-thin confection of a film starring Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeleine Kahn and the Italian star Duilio Del Prete in a sparkling roundelay of jealousy and lover’s quarrels set in a world of impossible glamour. It is difficult to overstate just how much the critics hated this film, and Bogdanovich himself, in 1975. At the time, it occupied the same place at the bottom of the conventional-taste pyramid that ISHTAR, SHOWGIRLS and GIGLI would inhabit in later generations. But, in hindsight, this seems like it could have been as popular as WHAT’S UP, DOC, had the mood of the country not turned so sour. As we have seen so often, popular taste can be revised, and that’s what we hope to do when we present this, perhaps Bogdanovich’s most misunderstood film, for a very special screening.

Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022) was a true, dyed-in-the-wool cinephile who made the leap to become a canonical film director. This three-film series, programmed by AFS Founder and Artistic Director Richard Linklater, pays tribute to the late master by presenting three of his films. One is a recognized classic (WHAT’S UP DOC) and the other two were savaged (AT LONG LAST LOVE) or ignored (NICKELODEON) upon release.