Review of Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

  There are a plethora of candidates to choose for silver screen “classics”. Because of what they offer the film industry at large, they become reflective of strong and controversial moments of the human condition, as well as the spectacle that only movies can make. One that I oft not see discussed is Arthur Penn’s 1967 Bonnie and Clyde.

It is a tour de force of Americana that stretches its characters wide with range and depth, but also bends between charming mishaps on the bank prowl and sucker-punches of raw blood and dropped bodies.

What attention it has received since its release during the late 1960’s has mainly been in recognition of its brutal closing scene, which I will discuss further into this review.

Many of its admirers, such as acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino, have spoken justice to the film’s brilliance and hold it as a progenitor to the trends of filmmaking that would come over the course of the 1970’s. I will, however, explain why this piece works instead of hearing from the mouths of others.

The Mise-en-scène

     Noticeable from the introductory is the backdrop of the 1930’s. The film itself opens up with a reel of photographs that showcase the families and upbringings of both Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty). She’s a former lowly waitress, and He’s a convict out on parole, both rebellious spirits ready to run from North-Texas out across depression-era United States.

The setting of the 30’s may seem antithetical to the 60’s spirit, what with the dust-bowl playing in historic and economic contrast to the Californian hippie.

However, the latter’s tone works wonders with the former’s setting in creating a mythos around these two historic robbers. It contrasts the realities of the Great-Depression that underlays a hippie road trip, in the vein of the decade the movie was itself released in.

Our characters

     Take for example Bonnie’s introduction, wherein she roams her room naked, laying down on her bed and getting back up to stretch. The camera, meanwhile, focuses on framing her just within the confines of prison-esque bed railings, a frame within a frame, and is just out of reach from showing a nipple and then some.

Or later on when trying to make a robbery escape amid their new liaison C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) banging their car into opposing fenders. We see quick cuts between the two and a pursuing teller while the robbers make a dash for escape. After C.W. lurches into a tight spot, a gun blasts the pursuer’s face red through cracked window and he is very clearly killed.

Historical context

These scenes aren’t anything too special by today’s standards (notwithstanding the attention to cinematic detail for film enthusiasts ), but this was extreme by 1967’s standards.

     Up to this point, more specifically since 1934, Hollywood had enforce the “Hays Code”, a list of guidelines censoring any content deemed too graphic, sexual, etc.

Of course, the white-supremacist natures of the Code’s draftsmen gave birth to odder restrictions, such as ‘no depictions of white slavery’ and ‘no interracial romances’ in support for their idealized visions of Uncle Sam, the Star-Spangled Banner, and other ‘Americanisms’.

The 60’s as a whole were marked by a blowback of national pride and preconceptions about the nation’s strengths. Both in international and domestic affairs (Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK Assassination to start), obviously extending to the Civil Rights and the Counterculture Movements respectively.

This was, in fact, the same decade actor Sidney Portier rose further to prominence for films like In The Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s coming to Dinner for his own chops and the injustices the black community faced (and still face) in this country, in tandem with the counter-culture attitudes of The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke and, of course, Bonnie and Clyde.

     Not to say that Bonnie and Clyde doesn’t make any comments on racial issues, though.

Influences

When the scene at the old house plays out around the film’s first half, we find that the former owner and his buddy, who just happens to be a black man, run into the main pair upon coming back to visit the foreclosed house. They then get a turn each with a gun Clyde found, using it to blast holes into the ‘for-sale’ sign outside the house perimeter.

It doesn’t say much else outside of that, although racial strife was not the intended focus of the film. More so the commentary on the counter-culture swing happening in the present time; made retrospectively, of course!

     Also of strong influence on this film was the French New Wave, a cinema movement coming out from, well, France, that focused entirely on breaking norms and traditions of cinema making and narrative continuity.

Many of the directors themselves, such as Agnes Varda, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Goddard, had began their careers as critics. David Newman, and Robert Benton, who wrote the film’s screenplay, actually gave a copy to Truffaut for further editing. Of course, a lot more ‘hollywoodisms’ of the dialogue stemming from Truffaut’s own movement.

Director Arthur Penn, with the suggestions of Truffaut, gave this American film a new look and movement through adding FDR flyers and Okie trucks, explicitly American settings and imagery.

Commentary

     All of this said, the film itself is not a celebration of anything prosperous or of a new burgeoning future, like those within the counter-culture hyped up.

It still exudes those ideas of newfound individualism and straying from older conformity. Character inactions, inadequacies, and criticisms, however, all undermine this naivetee.

As the famous Roger Ebert once said in his review of the film, “The murders are something to be gotten over…the same is true of the sex. Both are like the toy in a Crackerjack box: Worthless, but you feel cheated [if] it’s not there”.

These range from Clyde’s infidelity to the brutal skirmishes with the police, with ‘real’ blood seeping from our antihero’s wounds (thanks to the squib, tiny pyrotechnics used for greater effect in violence). It all dwindles for our main two as they fall into the law’s hands, right after Bonnie’s heartfelt poem narration.

To conclude

     Bonnie and Clyde is a film the industry owes a good amount to, but never fully references oddly enough. While it wasn’t the explicit straw that broke the Hays Code’s back, it sure lit the fuse for it to be blown up and for more free liberties to be used in Hollywood.

It’s setting of 30’s depression amid 60’s counter-culture makes a picture that is oozing with a candor richly of 1967. Taking heed from the French across the pond, it is a film that has absolutely given influence to styles and movements following its release. I see it a shame for not receiving more love on the individual level, as a great, near lawless piece of cinema.