PAPER MOON, a retrospective

Sunday
December 5, 2010

PAPER MOON (1973)—As P.T. Barnum put it, "There's a sucker born every minute."
     Paper Moon Directed by Peter Bogdonovich, from a screen play by Alvin Sargent  adapted from the novel, “Addie Pray” by Joe David Brown.  Paper Moon is the story of Moses Pray and eleven-year-old Addie Loggins, who may or may not be his daughter. Together the pair grift the back country of Missouri and Kansas under the guise of the “Kansas Bible Company”—selling bibles to unsuspecting widows, and short-changing dim witted five-and-dime clerks.
     Paper Moon is without a doubt one of the finest pieces of American cinema to grace the 70’s. Lazlo Kovacs' stunning black and white photography  gives the film a nostalgic beauty that perfectly complements the Depression-era it attempts to recreate. The film’s sound track only reinforces the movie’s charm, with the wonderful opening title track; It’s only a Paper Moon setting the stage for the drama . . . Peter Bogdonovich once consulted with no less than Orson Wells, as to whether to call the movie Addie Pray or Paper Moon. To which Wells replied, “That title is so good, you shouldn't even make the picture, you should just release the title!”
     The soundtrack is a marvelous nostalgic cavalcade of vintage recordings like, "Keep your Sunnyside up" and "Let's have another cup of coffee." Madeline Kahn is hysterically funny as Miss Trixie Delight, and Ryan O’Neal gives one of the best performances of his career.

    And her name is Tatum O’Neal; Tatum is just cool.  Tatum so completely steals this movie and I’m not just talking about the quality of her acting, there's just something about her, when she's sitting in bed, clad in a white cotton singlet smoking a cigarette, the camera is in love with her.  We are in love with her. From the second Tatum comes on screen, this little girl who swears and smokes and runs cons with a man who may or may not be her daddy made a powerful impression on me. I think it is safe to say that Tatum O’Neal, for better or worse changed me.  The year was 1973, at fifteen years-old, I was young and impressionable. I was smitten.

     It’s Tatum who gets the best lines (and best close-ups), in one of the film’s classic sequences, Addie confronts Moze at the county fair . . .

ADDIE

I had my photo took Moze!

MOZE

You did, huh? Ain’t that fine.

ADDIE

Moze, can you come have your photo took with me?

MOZE

Can’t right now sweetheart.

ADDIE

Only take a minute.

MOZE

Not now, you hear me? And stop standing around here checking on me . . . you don’t have to worry. I ain’t about to leave some poor little child stranded in the middle of nowhere. I got scruples you know. You know what that is, “scruples?”

ADDIE

No, I don’t know what it is, but if you got them, I sure bet they belong to somebody else.

Paper Moon (1973) ****