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Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty are the shallow, violent romantics Bonnie and Clyde |
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Warren Beatty (Clyde Barrow), Faye Dunaway (Bonnie
Parker), Michael J Pollard (CW Moss), Gene Hackman (Buck Barrow), Estelle
Parsons (Blanche Barrow), Denver Pyle (Marshal Frank Hamer), Dub Taylor (Ivan
Moss), Gene Wilder (Eugene Grizzard), Evans Evans (Velma Davis)
Bonnie and Clyde
can lay claim to being one of the most influential American films ever made. It
came out of a seismic cultural change in America, as old style Hollywood
royalty faded out and a new generation stormed the barricades to make films
that felt rougher, rawer and told complex stories in shades of grey.
Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye
Dunaway): drifting youngsters, not interested in accepting a conventional life.
They want to go where they please and take what they please. And if some people
get hurt – well they can justify that to themselves. As the poster famously
said: “They’re young. They’re in love. And they kill people”. In a deliberately
disjointed narrative, where time is unclear, the two meet, head out together,
commit crimes, stay on the run and are eventually killed by law enforcement.
The story is simple – it’s the telling of it that matters.
Bonnie and Clyde
latches on to a counter-culture vibe that was growing in strength at the time.
But what the film does so brilliantly is subvert this. It invites us to
identify to with the romantic, Byronic yearnings of its heroes, who see
themselves as free spirits, living a life of idealistic, unconstrained
excitement. But the film also has a clear eye on the trail of violence they
leave behind them, their lack of regard for this and the impact on the victims.
Because make no mistake, these dreamy killers get more and more violent as they
go on.
The film turns these two killers into would-be celebrities –
guys who want to project a certain image of themselves to the world (down to
mailing the papers photos and poems about themselves). They enjoy the notoriety
and their self-proclaimed mythology. Clyde walks into banks and gleefully
announces he’s with the “Barrow gang”, as if half expecting someone to ask for
his autograph. Later in the film, as Clyde reads their press coverage out loud,
with CW Moss like a star-struck groupie, the film never forgets the two of them
were basically nobodies, who wanted to feel like somebodies.
And it lets you enjoy the romance of this. There is
something fairy-tale like in the film about Clyde picking up Bonnie from
outside of her home, taking her into town for flirting and robbery. The whole
film continues this dreamy logic, with time jumps and scenes that don’t
necessarily link up directly with each other.
But then the violence takes over. Wow is Bonnie and Clyde a film that lets you
know about the impact of bullets. Gun shots don’t just maim or wing, they rip
bodies apart. The japey feeling of their bank robberies gets dispelled about
half an hour into the film when Clyde shoots a bank teller in the head from
point blank range (“him or me”, he later tells his brother). The gang are so
incompetent, that the film is frequently punctured by shoot-outs in which no
mercy is shown to anyone.
This is of course hard for the gang to reconcile with their
self-image as Robin Hoods, so they mostly forget about it. Clyde won’t steal
money from ordinary people (though he’ll happily steal cars, or beat a grocery
store clerk into a coma). They playfully tease and taunt a captive US Marshal –
until he spits in Bonnie’s face at which point violence ensues. Only at points
do the gang seem to have the slightest idea of the dangers: after kidnapping
Gene Wilder’s nervy car-owner and his fiancé, a happy-go-lucky Evan Evans (both
excellent), merry conversations in the car with the gang are suddenly halted
when Wilder admits he’s an undertaker – Bonnie immediately demands they are thrown
out and the next shot is her weeping in a field. She doesn’t seem to understand
the connection, but we can.
The film is superbly put together. Warren Beatty produced
the movie practically from its inception. Robert Benton and David Newman’s
script was intended as a French New Wave film – evident in its looseness, its
lack of old-school values, its violence, its focus on naïve dreamers who choose
the easy way out – but Beatty took the script, re-crafted it with Robert Towne
(billed as special advisor) and decided the film needed an American director,
not a Truffaut or Godard. He brought on board Arthur Penn, and the two worked
together (fought together) closely to bring this radical, edgy, jittery,
electric film to the screen.
Penn and Beatty pushed themselves to some of their best
work. Beatty is terrific as the vainglorious Clyde – whose determination in
crime is matched by his impotence in the sack (the film wisely doesn’t overplay
Clyde’s impotence as an ironic theme, but lets the audience draw its own
conclusions). He also produced the film expertly. Penn’s direction is sublime,
marrying the finest elements of French New Wave cinema with old-style Westerns.
The film is restless and energetic, and intermixes moments
of fun and frivolity among the gang with ominous danger and violence. The
camera jitters and shakes, while throwing us into the action – the film is
masterfully edited – while at other points sailing on like a neutral observer. The
film has a neat satiric edge, and Penn uses banjo music masterfully to
ironically contrast with much of the action we see on the screen. The
characters – all of them – seem to spend so much time talking about their press
coverage because they have so little to say to each other. Even the lovers only
really seem to find a moment of quiet devotion shortly before their death. It
give you violence as entertainment, but also tells you effectively and quietly
how appalling and dangerous violence is.
The acting is similarly extraordinary. Beatty is wonderful,
as is Dunaway as an impossibly young, romantic Bonnie who adapts with alarming
swiftness to killing and robbing. Michael J Pollard is excellent as the
slightly simple, eager young car mechanic who hero-worships the couple. Hackman
and Parsons are both excellent as Barrow’s older-but-not-wiser brother, and his
wife who seesaws between resentment, fear and an imperious delight in her
new-found infamy.
Penn’s brilliant film deconstructs the mythology of
criminals to show the emptiness underneath, their shallow self-regard and lack
of insight. It does this while still managing somehow to remain affectionate
towards these two murderous dreamers. Bonnie
and Clyde is a sublime modern Western, a commentary on fame, a dissection
of violence and a great black comedy. Shot with youthful energy and an
influential lack of traditionalism, it’s a film that always feels modern and
necessary.