Bonnie & Clyde
Warner Brothers – 1967
Directed by Arthur Penn
Written by David Newman & Robert Benton; Robert Towne (uncredited)
Produced by Warren Beatty
Original Music by Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs
Cinematography by Burnett Guffey
Film Editing by Dede Allen
Art Direction by Dean Tavoularis
Principal Cast
Warren Beatty ............................................... Clyde Barrow
Faye Dunaway ……………………………... Bonnie Parker
Michael J. Pollard .............................................. C.W. Moss
Gene Hackman ……………………………... Buck Barrow
Estelle Parsons …………………….……………... Blanche
Denver Pyle ……………………………….... Frank Hamer
Dub Taylor …………………………………..... Ivan Moss
Evans Evans …………………………...….... Velma Davis
Gene Wilder …………………………..... Eugene Grizzard
Notes
“They're young. They're in love. And they kill people” Bonnie & Clyde is a violent,
romanticized version of the famous bank-robbing duo during the 1930’s depression.
A genuine 1960’s rebellion piece. You find yourself rooting for these anti-heroes that are
against the establishment, which is what radicalism in the '60's was all about. The
common theme in this picture and other late ‘60’s – early ‘70’s classics such as One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Wild Bunch, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, Cool Hand Luke, etc., are of a man fighting an overpowering, evil establishment
until death. The heroes are anti-heroes in that they engage in crime and are highly
morally questionable except that they live by a strict code of deep ethics that usually
compels them to do the “right thing” which results in their killing.
French New Wave directors, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were both offered
the role of Director before Arthur Penn.
Warner Bros. gave the film a limited, “B” movie-type release at first, opening it to driveins and lesser theaters. When critics began raving about the film and young people began
to show up at screenings, it was better promoted, given a wider release and became a
huge hit.
Pauline Kael pretty much launched her great career defending this film while many older
critics bashed it on first release.
Thousand of berets were sold worldwide after Faye Dunaway wore them in this film.
Although nowhere near horrific like modern movies, the cycle violence in movies began
most clearly with this picture. From Bonnie and Clyde descended Badlands , Straw Dogs
Thelma & Louise , Drugstore Cowboy, Natural Born Killers and countless other movies
in which ordinary people were transformed by sudden violence into legend.
Bonnie and Clyde was called “the first modern American film” by critic Patrick
Goldstein, in an essay on its 30th anniversary. Certainly it felt like that at the time. The
movie opens like a slap in the face. American filmgoers had never seen anything like it.
In tone and freedom it descended from the French new wave, particularly Francois
Truffaut's own film about doomed lovers, Jules and Jim. Indeed, it was Truffaut who
first embraced the original screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton, and called
it to the attention of Warren Beatty, who decided to produce it.
The legend of the film's production has become almost as famous as its heroes. Stories
are told about how Beatty knelt at the feet of studio boss Jack Warner, begging for the
right to make the film. How Warner saw the original cut and hated it. How the movie
premiered at the Montreal film festival, and was roasted by Bosley Crowther of the New
York Times. How Warner Bros. determined to dump it in a chain of Texas drive-ins, and
how Beatty implored the studio to give it a chance.
How it opened and quickly closed in the autumn of 1967, panned by the critics. The
movie closed, but would not go away. The soundtrack, bluegrass by Flatt and Scruggs,
went to the top of the charts. Theodora Van Runkle's berets and maxiskirts for Dunaway
started a global fashion craze. Newsweek critic Joseph Morgenstern famously wrote that
his original negative review had been mistaken. The movie reopened, went on to become
one of Warner Bros.’ biggest hits and won 10 nominations and two Oscars.
More important was the impact the film had on the American movie industry. Beatty's
willingness to play a violent character with sexual dysfunction was unusual for a
traditional leading man. In a famous Esquire profile by Rex Reed, which appeared as the
movie was opening, he was dismissed as a has-been pretty boy. Bonnie and Clyde put
him permanently on the Hollywood map.
Beatty and director Arthur Penn cast the movie with unknown stage actors, yet all the
major players (Dunaway, Parsons, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Wilder)
became stars on the basis of this film. Behind the camera, the movie launched the careers
of editor Dede Allen (Little Big Man)and production designer Dean Tavoularis, who
went on to work on Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. And
the cinematography of Guffey launched a whole new wave of its own, of films shot and
edited in the more impressionistic French style.
Today, the freshness of Bonnie and Clyde has been absorbed in countless other films,
and it's hard to see how fresh and original it felt in 1967, just as the impact of Citizen
Kane, in 1941, may not be obvious to those raised in the shadow of its influence. While
hailed as the first modern American film Bonnie and Clyde may very well be the first
American post-modern film with anti-heroes, mixed genres, and glamorized violence.
reprinted from
Bonnie and Clyde
Warner. Director Arthur Penn; Producer Warren Beatty; Screenplay David
Newman, Robert Benton; Camera Burnett Guffey; Editor Dede Allen; Music
Charles Strouse; Art Director Dean Tavoularis. Reviewed at Academy Award
Theatre, Aug 1, 1967.
Clyde Barrow - Warren Beatty
Bonnie Parker - Faye Dunaway
C. W. Moss - Michael J. Pollard
Buck Barrow - Gene Hackman
Blanche - Estelle Parsons
Frank Hamer - Denver Pyle
Ivan Moss - Dub Taylor
Velma Davis - Evans Evans
Eugene Grizzard - Gene Wilder
REVIEW BY DAVE KAUFMAN
Warren Beatty's initial effort as a producer, "Bonnie and Clyde," incongruously
couples comedy with crime, in this biopic of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, a
pair of Texas desperadoes who roamed and robbed the southwest and midwest
during the bleak Depression days of the early 1930s. Conceptually, the film leaves
much to be desired, because killings and the backdrop of the Depression are
scarcely material for a bundle of laughs. However, the film does have some standout
interludes, and with a hard sell exploitation campaign should do big. Beatty and
Faye Dunaway are the only cast names of any established marquee value.
The David Newman-Robert Benton screenplay depicts the Parker-Barrow gang as
clowns and good-natured oafs most of the time, even during some of their
holdups. Characterizations are, in the main, inconsistent and confusing. When
Bonnie Parker, in a moody moment, as she senses the end is near for them, asks
her lover, Barrow, what he would do differently if he could start all over again, he
drawls unhesitatingly, that he would rob banks in states other than the one in
which he lived.
Thus it is for the entire film. Scripters Newman and Benton have depicted these
real-life characters as inept, bumbling, moronic types, and if this had been true
they would have been erased in their first try. It's a picture with conflicting
moods, racing from crime to comedy, and intermingling genuinely moving love
scenes between Faye Dunaway as Bonnie and Beatty as Clyde. Bonnie is a sexy,
lusty, beautiful femme, and discovers with deep frustration that Clyde is
impotent, but stays with him. Late in the film, it is inferred that he becomes a
man in every sense of the word.
These are sensitive and well-executed scenes, yet made all the more incongruous
against the almost slapstick approach of much of the picture. When the gang
heists a bank and kills someone, they barrel off in the car, to accompaniment of a
soundtrack which is built-in for laughs, music which seems to be right out of "The
Beverly Hillbillies."
This inconsistency of direction is the most obvious fault of "Bonnie and Clyde,"
which has some good ingredients, although they are not meshed together well. It
has a lot of violence, climaxed with the killing of Bonnie and Clyde by lawmen
who pour many bullets into them in an ambush.
Like the film itself, the performances are mostly erratic. Beatty is believable at
times, but his characterization lacks any consistency. Miss Dunaway is a
knockout as Bonnie Parker, registers with deep sensitivity in the love scenes, and
conveys believability to her role. Michael J. Pollard and Gene Hackman are more
clowns than baddies as gang members; Estelle Parsons is good, as Buck Barrows'
wife, and there is some substantial support from Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor and
Evans Evans.
Arthur Penn's direction is uneven, at times catching a brooding, arresting quality,
but often changing pace at a tempo that is jarring. Color camerawork by Burnett
Guffey is excellent. Music by Charles Strouse is in the hillbilly comedic vein,
seems out of tune for an outlaw yarn.