Bonnie And Clyde

1 9 6 7 (USA)

Bonnie and Clyde (Dunaway and Beatty) are presented as social drop-outs, alienated from a decayed society. They are joined by Clyde's brother, Buck and his wife, and a driver called C W Moss as they take to the road and live out of their car, engaging in violent criminal activities across the USA.

And the criminal activities (and subsequent retribution) are certainly violent - No gangster film before Bonnie and Clyde had quite so much red in it!

In the slow-motion ballet of brutality that concludes the film (when Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed and shot to pieces by Frank Hamer's posse), director Arthur Penn has said that the feeling he had in mind and wanted to convey was something like the shock of the JFK assassination (and the horrific detail when part of Clyde's head is blown off in the shooting is an anguished allusion to the Kennedy murder). The scene set new standards for screen violence in 1967 and It's a testament to Penn's work that the sequence is still shocking today.

This film became famous partially for the controversy it provoked. Bonnie and Clyde was accused of romanticizing criminals and of glorifying violence - given the painfulness of the violence in the film, this latter charge is quite extraordinary!.

But most critics had to concede the extraordinary accomplishment of the film, its splendid performances, stunning photography and razor sharp dialogue.

Yet at the end of the day, it was not the movie's quality that made it a big box office hit - it was its notoriety.

TRIVIA NOTE
In the final movie, Clyde Barrow is impotent, but apparently in the original script, Clyde was gay, Bonnie was a nymphomaniac, and they were both making it with their driver, C W Moss. Now that would have been a film!