PETER BOGDANOVICH is a director who thinks on his feet. He translates his fiction onto film like it was embossed on slate, exact and crystal clear. As he understated in a recent interview, "I am rather precise, and there is not much room for improvisation once we agree on what the scene is." Each Bogdanovich shot is like an Andrew Wyeth painting, possessing more definition and harder edges than anything real.

In the opening scenes of Paper Moon, his newest film, he shows so stark and mundane a churchyard funeral that it is impossible to project anything personal into it. There is no toehold to stand on, which means that the scene must be accepted for its celluloid self, and your subjectivity abrogated. Once he has done that you are glued to his films, and he takes you across whatever elusive terrain he chooses.

This immediacy is the vehicle for his full-bodied human landscapes. In the prairielands of Kansas or Texas Bogdanovich creates characters who set out to realize their wildest dreams, whether they be beautiful women or perfect con-games. They don't realize them, but in the process achieve a personal authenticity more important than their dreams. What good is a bulging wallet anyway? They ramble across barren countryside, hands in their pockets, eyes to the ground, finding what they never looked for, contented all the same. He breaks down their myths, without making anybody lose.

When it's at its best Paper Moon comes across like a country wanderer's ballad, replete with lyrics about lonesome roads and hard times, and the resonance of Midwestern vistas and old time hotels. And indeed, Paper Moon is often at its best. Ryan O'Neal and his real life ten-year-old daughter, Tatum, successfully play a May-December couple who travel through depression Kansas trying to scrape by until they pull off a big enough con game to retire for life. Their travels are like an up-river adventure, each bend offering an old town to back-drop their money making schemes.

THIS DUO HARDLY SUFFERS the run of the mill depression destitution; they make it big off of everyone else's. They are cool, classy and successful, with enough self-confidence to tell anybody off. The American heartland is their arena for hustling and stealing. They sell Bibles to grieving widows, trade a five and four ones for a ten dollar bill, and steal a bootlegger's liquor to sell it back to him.

Bogdanovich rescues you from the murky waters of loss with the comedy of a rambunctious ten-year-old running devious circles around a man old enough to be her father. The funniest parts of the film are the con-games they play--Ryan double talking to confuse the dupe, Tatum crying to win his sympathies.

It is never clear if Tatum is Ryan's daughter in the film -- she comes into his care after her mother's funeral -- and it doesn't really matter. Along with the audience, he falls under the spell of her raspy voice, impish deceit, and winsome pugface.

Whenever Tatum appears she fills the screen with a combination of light footed gaiety and ingenuous toughness. In her best scene she stands in front of a bathroom mirror trying to twist her ten-year-old body into a sexy pose. It remains to be seen if she can expand her repertoire a little bit and solidify her claim as a new child star.

When Paper Moon lags it is because of the elder O'Neal. The innocence that made him the modern American lover in Love Story and Peyton Place is a confusing image in the tough times of depression Kansas. It's hard to get at what he is or what he feels. He is a leading man without character, like Charlton Heston would be without physical presence. He seems to nullify every forward step he takes.

THE FILM would be difficult morally if it superseded itself to take on a larger meaning. But the aggressive individualism of the film is only a means of survival in difficult times. It is not the celebration of a life style of personal irresponsibility. It makes no difference that fooling widows and robbing shopkeepers is immoral -- this particular mood of freedom from other people's laws and feelings is the most spirited aspect of the film. You delight in seeing the attractive duo get away with their tricks. They play their games with wit and style and enjoy each other's company immensely. When they're together you have to like them, no matter what they do.

Within its limited scope, Paper Moon is remarkable for the power and precision of its images. Bogdanovich takes small ideas and small characters and blows them into beautiful pictures that stay true to themselves. The result is mostly sentiment, but of a kind powerful enough to evoke important responses without spelling them out.

His sentiment gathers the disenchantment of 1973 in a nutshell and transfers it to a moment of the past. For Bogdanovich, the disenchantment creates a self-awareness more important than illusory goals. Admittedly this is resignation in the face of defeat, but when it is only art and not a way of life, I accept it.