Peter Bogdanovich: An Exasperating, Brilliant Filmmaker Who Changed His Art Form

A true student of cinema, Peter Bogdanovich set the table for the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino by pioneering an intriguing new approach to cinema: making movies about other movies.

Like those others, Bogdanovich lived in the movies, and so he refracted and reflected on his Golden Age of Hollywood favorites with Seventies intensity, and in some cases improved on them. The intricately plotted and hilarious Ryan O’Neal–Barbra Streisand screwball comedy What’s Up Doc (1972) is funnier than the 1930s farces that inspired it, notably 1938’s Bringing Up Baby, and there’s a slapstick sequence starring Burt Reynolds in Bogdanovich’s vastly underrated homage to the silent era, Nickelodeon (1976), that is at least as funny as the Buster Keaton routines to which it pays homage.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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A true student of cinema, Peter Bogdanovich set the table for the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino by pioneering an intriguing new approach to cinema: making movies about other movies.

Like those others, Bogdanovich lived in the movies, and so he refracted and reflected on his Golden Age of Hollywood favorites with Seventies intensity, and in some cases improved on them. The intricately plotted and hilarious Ryan O’Neal–Barbra Streisand screwball comedy What’s Up Doc (1972) is funnier than the 1930s farces that inspired it, notably 1938’s Bringing Up Baby, and there’s a slapstick sequence starring Burt Reynolds in Bogdanovich’s vastly underrated homage to the silent era, Nickelodeon (1976), that is at least as funny as the Buster Keaton routines to which it pays homage.