While in principle it is not a good practice to speak ill of those who have passed, we often find that certain stories resonate slightly more once someone has died. After his death a few years ago, there were countless stories about the genius of Peter Bogdanovich, perhaps the person many of us would choose if we were to name someone as the defining figure in the New Hollywood movement – a student of the great directors of the past who would go on to not only launch the careers of some of the greatest actors of their generation, but serve as a mentor to many filmmakers that emerged in the years that followed. However, for every bit of praise he received for his ingenuity and artistic skill, there was one that outlined that he was something of a tyrant while at his peak, the kind of filmmaker who would direct a scene entirely on horseback solely because John Ford had done so, meaning that Bogdanovich viewed himself as a similarly brilliant filmmaker worthy of being compared with someone who is often considered the most important American director of his generation. This isn’t meant to be a derisive deconstruction of his life and career, but rather the introduction to a film that he made during quite a peculiar moment in his directorial journey, and one that represents the pinnacle of all his shortcomings as an artist. Nickelodeon is considered the final entry into an unofficial trilogy of tragic misfires that Bogdanovich had made in the late 1970s, following Daisy Miller and At Long Last Love, forming a trio of films that are the perfect exemplification of the results that come about when giving a rambunctious young director slightly too much liberty and access to a seemingly endless pool of resources – and while it is decidedly not a good film in either concept nor execution, the film is quite an experience, albeit not one that I would particularly recommend to those who don’t have an abundance of patience and the willingness to handle a rather dreadful attempt at capturing the spirit of the past, something that Bogdanovich usually tended to thrive in achieving.

In theory, Nickelodeon has all the characteristics of a masterful, insightful glimpse into the history of cinema. The film is set in the early 1910s, when the industry (or whatever assemblage of scraps of ambition we can refer to as Hollywood) was still in its infancy, but driven by perhaps the most audacious artists to ever work in the medium, creative souls who were handed this new technology and told to experiment with it, the results essentially laying the foundation for the entire concept of filmmaking. Bogdanovich had a very obvious fascination with Hollywood – he was a bridge between eras, while being a defining figure in one himself, and therefore he had access to a wide range of unique, first-hand accounts from people who worked on both sides of the camera, stretching as far back as the early days of the silent era, which is precisely where this film is set. Objectively, Nickelodeon has a good story – it was originally conceived without the director’s involvement, as a more straightforward drama about the early years of cinema, which swiftly changed once Bogdanovich was recruited, and essentially rewrote the entire script, leaving only trace amounts of the original. This is immediately clear on screen, since the film is less about how these pioneers laid the foundation for Hollywood, and more about the meandering adventures of two down-on-their-luck artists desperate to make it in an industry that hadn’t even yet reached its adolescence, making their journey all the more compelling, at least from a distance. From a conceptual perspective, Nickelodeon has some very strong ideas – it’s simply in the execution that it begins to falter and becomes an overbloated, uncomfortable jumble of ideas, none of which are particularly effective or meaningful beyond the most obvious elements.

Where this film truly falls apart – and does so in a spectacular fashion – is in the execution. The ideas that underpin Nickelodeon are strong and could have made for a terrific film in theory, with the problem not being related to the setting or the story as a whole, but rather the approach the director takes to putting these ideas together. Primarily, we find that this is a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be – the original screenplay by Irwin Winkler was written as a more sombre, dramatic work in which the early days of the silent era were explored in detail, with a more tragicomic tone persisting throughout. Resting on his laurels to the point where he believed himself to be not only a fantastic storyteller but an inherently funny filmmaker, Bogdanovich decided to rework the concept into a wacky, off-the-wall comedy, which does make sense from a distance, but begins to demonstrate a clear lack of planning almost immediately. The film is simply too lightweight for any of its more emotional moments to even vaguely register, and is also far too heavy-handed and humourless to actually allow the comedy to emerge. It takes itself far too seriously, and it is shrouded in layers of self-importance and arrogance. It is the coagulation of the worst aspects of Bogdanovich’s ego, something that reached its peak with this film, and mercifully went into remission as a result of his string of misfires leading him to essentially reinvent himself as a more humble filmmaker, rather than attempting to be the singular defining voice of his generation, something that was so obviously the intention behind Nickelodeon, which tries desperately to reignite the passion caused by films like What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon, both being clear influences but being so vastly different in terms of quality and effort.

It was very clear that Nickelodeon was a film that did not know what it wanted to be, and while this is hardly enough to base our criticisms around, it does highlight many of the elements that are far from desirable that are only present because of the outright refusal to recognise when something is not functioning as well as it should be, which is another major flaw of this film, and a sign of the director’s lack of willingness to pay attention to the finer details. Nothing is more frustrating than a great cast being squandered on such a dismal production – and Nickelodeon is a perfect example of how this can essentially derail an already contentious production. Ryan O’Neal is not someone we particularly perceive as an inherently gifted actor – he had talent, but he needed a strong director to shepherd his raw skills into something meaningful, which is why some of his greatest work is under a few of the most important directors of their generation, such as Stanley Kubrick and Walter Hill, who could harness his abilities and use them to create memorable characters. Bogdanovich is perhaps the director who understood him the most, and through both What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon, he managed to effectively show that O’Neal was capable of being a truly magnetic screen presence. Unfortunately, his performance in this film is too dull to even be worth criticising – there’s nothing valuable about what he is doing here, and the entire production just feels like an opportunity for him to play a bland, unconvincing character. Conversely, Burt Reynolds was someone who lit up the screen whenever he stepped onto it, so it’s even more puzzling how Bogdanovich managed to not only cast Reynolds as the comic relief but waste him so severely that we actually can’t appreciate such a bold swing. The lack of chemistry between the actors only further proves the lacklustre nature of this film, and essentially prevents it from achieving even the slightest modicum of greatness, which is wildly disappointing considering its potential.

Taste tends to change, and time is often quite kind to critically reviled films in a lot of instances, with the general principle being that a good portion of works that are seen as failures at the time of their release will eventually be reconsidered by future audiences and viewed as misunderstood masterpieces. Nearly fifty years since it was released, Nickelodeon is every bit a misfire today as it was when it was first presented to audiences – and we still find that it is usually met with one of two reactions: a shrug of absolute ambivalence and boredom, or a rabid tirade about how it is an overbloated, lengthy disaster without so much as the smallest ounce of a redeeming factor to be found anywhere throughout. We find ourselves straining to the point of painful frustration as we scramble to find even the slightest trace of charm in this film, which honestly proves to be one of the most humourless, dour comedies ever produced, to the point where it even feels like a betrayal to categorise it as such, since there’s nothing funny about this film, which is not even an effective satire, despite the countless opportunities it had to make even the slightest impression. Bogdanovich had the whole world in his hands and was essentially given a blank cheque after his impressive run of films in the 1970s, and it was very clear that he became slightly too ambitious. Mercifully he would be back on the saddle in only a matter of years, with his return to form starting with the well-liked Saint Jack and They All Laughed, which allowed him to transition into a new chapter, which ultimately would not have been possible without the monumental failure of films like Nickelodeon, which proves that ambition, while a valuable commodity, is not always the most appropriate way to make a film, especially one that is essentially this misguided and heavy-handed in so many ways.