Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
 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 romanticising
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.
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!
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