My Favorite Movies: Paper Moon

I was sitting in Barnes & Noble the other day flipping through Tatum O’Neal’s Autobiography and I was filled with longing to revisit this favorite movie.

This Peter Bogdanovitch classic from 1973 is the vehicle through which Tatum snagged the Oscar for best supporting actress. Why is this significant? Not only because it was her first film role, or because her co-star was her real-life father Ryan O’Neal, but because at the time it was made, she was just nine years old-- a record that has yet to be beaten.

I love this DVD in particular because it is one of the few “classics” I have that actually contains a commentary from the producer/director. It is always a treat to hear how and why movies like this were made, what happened behind the scenes, and what was going on inside the minds and lives of great actors and directors.

This movie opens in the dusty open fields of depression-era Kansas. Strange as it seems, You can still drive through parts of Kansas and it looks exactly the same.

Shot entirely in black and white with a red filter enhancing the contrast, Paper Moon visually sets itself apart from movies shot after the advent of color film. Visually, I think I enjoyed two things most of all: The car chases (unusual for me) and Tatum’s face on screen. I am not a car chase kind of a girl, but the rumbling old cars and the fantastic wild feeling of them bouncing down dirt roads, kicking up clouds of dust strikes me as a lot more fun than roaring hot rods screeching and “drifting” through the streets of Tokyo. Tatum jut has flawless skin and a really compelling face. Maybe it’s because she looks a bit like pictures of my grandmother at that age, but something about her just makes me want to watch her on screen.

The story of Paper Moon, adapted from “Addie Pray,” by Joe David Brown, follows Addie and the man who just might be her father Moses “Mose” Pray, as he delivers her to relatives in St. Joe, Missouri after the death of her mother. From the opening scene, you can tell that Addie is a little more savvy than most little girls her age. You get the impression that she looks straight through to Mose’s soul and knows him for what he is before anyone brings up the subject. An even better con artist than Mose himself, Addie is soon helping him peddle Bibles to recently widowed women.

The supporting cast is riddles with strange and delightfully bizarre characters. Madeline Kahn, always one of my favorite comediennes is nothing short of amazing. One moment she is a comic bimbo, the next a desperate and vulnerable woman revealing her own insecurities, and then again in the very next a hateful villain. That kind of flexibility is what brings me back to this film time after time.

It reminds me a lot of later movies like Curly Sue and Matchstick Men. I really enjoy that father/daughter/con-artist relationship explored on film- and I think it’s all because of Paper Moon.

This is a great movie to watch when you want to laugh wryly or cuddle up with on a sick day.