Bonnie and Clyde (film)

Bonnie and Clyde

film poster by Tom Chantrell
Directed by Arthur Penn
Produced by Warren Beatty
Written by David Newman
Robert Benton
Uncredited:
Robert Towne
Warren Beatty
Starring Warren Beatty
Faye Dunaway
Music by Charles Strouse
Cinematography Burnett Guffey
Editing by Dede Allen
Distributed by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Release date(s) 4 August 1967 (Montreal Film Fest.)
13 August 1967 (US)
Running time 111 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $2,500,000 (est.)

Bonnie and Clyde is a 1967 American crime film about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the bank robbers who operated in the central United States during the Great Depression. The film was directed by Arthur Penn, and stars Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker. The screenplay was written by David Newman and Robert Benton, with Robert Towne and Beatty providing uncredited contributions to the script.

Bonnie and Clyde is considered a landmark film, and is regarded as one of the first films of the New Hollywood era, in that it broke many taboos and was popular with the younger generation. Its success motivated other filmmakers to be more forward about presenting sex and violence in their films. The culmination of this trend may have been The Wild Bunch.[1]

Bonnie and Clyde received Academy Awards for "Best Supporting Actress" (Estelle Parsons) and "Best Cinematography" (Burnett Guffey), and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Contents

Plot

In the middle of the Great Depression, Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) meet when Clyde tries to steal Bonnie's mother's car. Bonnie, who is bored by her job as a waitress, is intrigued with Clyde, and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime. They do some holdups, but their amateur efforts, while exciting, are not very lucrative.

The duo's crime spree shifts into high gear once they hook up with a dim-witted gas station attendant, C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard). The three are joined by Clyde's brother, Buck (Gene Hackman), and his wife, Blanche (Estelle Parsons), a preacher's daughter. Soon a long-simmering feud between Bonnie and Blanche begins; the once-prim Blanche views Bonnie as a harpy corrupting her husband and brother-in-law, while Bonnie sees Blanche as an incompetent, shrill shrew.

With their gang now assembled, Bonnie and Clyde turn from pulling small-time heists to robbing banks. Their exploits also become more violent. When C.W., the get-away driver, botches a bank robbery by parallel parking the car, Clyde shoots the bank manager in the face after he jumps onto the slow-moving car's running board. The gang is pursued by law enforcement, including Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), a Texas Ranger who is captured and humiliated by the outlaws, then set free. With a score to settle, the ranger leads a raid that kills Buck, injures Bonnie and Clyde, and leaves Blanche sightless and in police custody. Hamer tricks Blanche, whose eyes are bandaged, into revealing the name of C.W. Moss, known in the press only as an unnamed accomplice.

The Ranger locates Bonnie and Clyde and C.W. hiding at the house of C.W.'s father, Ivan Moss (Dub Taylor). Because Ivan thinks Bonnie and Clyde have corrupted his son, he strikes a bargain with Hamer: in exchange for a lenient jail sentence for C.W., he reveals Bonnie and Clyde's location and helps set a trap for them. When Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed while stopped by the side of the road, the police riddle their bodies with bullets in a blood bath.

Cast

Cast notes:

Production and style

The film was intended as a romantic and comic version of the violent gangster films of the 1930s, updated with modern filmmaking techniques.[2] Arthur Penn deliberately portrayed some of the violent scenes with a comic tone, sometimes even reminiscent of Keystone Kops-style slapstick films, then shifted disconcertingly into horrific and gory violence.[3] The film was heavily influenced by the French New Wave directors, both in its rapid shifts of tone, and in its choppy editing, which is particularly noticeable in the film's closing sequence.[4] In fact, the film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the most famous director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script, but passed on the project.[5]

The film is forthright in its handling of sexuality. When Clyde brandishes his gun to display his manhood, Bonnie suggestively strokes the phallic symbol. Like the 1950 film Gun Crazy, Bonnie and Clyde portrays crime as alluring and intertwined with sex. Because Clyde is impotent, his further attempts to physically woo Bonnie are frustrating and anti-climactic.

Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first films to feature extensive use of squibs — small explosive charges, often mounted with bags of fake blood, that are detonated inside an actor's clothes to simulate bullet hits.

The family gathering scene was filmed in Red Oak, Texas. Several local residents were watching the film being shot, when the filmmakers noticed Mabel Cavitt, a local school teacher, among the people gathered, who was then chosen to play Bonnie Parker's mother. [6]

Music

The instrumental banjo piece "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Flatt and Scruggs was introduced to a worldwide audience as a result of its frequent use in the movie. Its use is entirely anachronistic, however: the bluegrass-style of music from which the piece stems dates from the mid-1940s.

Historical accuracy

The real Bonnie and Clyde, c.1933

The film considerably simplifies the facts about Bonnie and Clyde, which included other gang members, repeated jailings, and other murders and assorted crimes. One of the film's major characters, "C.W. Moss", is a composite of two members of the Barrow Gang: William Daniel "W.D." Jones and Henry Methvin. In 1968, Jones outlined his period with the Barrows in a Playboy magazine article "Riding with Bonnie and Clyde". In that same year, he also filed a lawsuit against Warner Brothers, claiming that the film Bonnie and Clyde "maligned" him and damaged his character. [7] There is no record of him having collected any damages.[8]

The film portrays Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (played by Denver Pyle) as a vengeful bungler who had been captured, humiliated, and released by Bonnie and Clyde. In reality, the first time Hamer met either of them was when he staged the successful ambush and killing of them in 1934. In 1968, Frank Hamer's widow and son sued the producers of this movie for defamation of character over his portrayal. They were awarded an out of court settlement in 1971.[6]

The only two members of the actual Barrow Gang who were still alive at the time of the film's release were Blanche Barrow and William Daniel Jones. While Blanche Barrow approved the depiction of her in the original version of the film's script, she objected to the later re-writes, and at the film's release, complained loudly about Estelle Parsons' Oscar-winning performance of her, stating "That film made me look like a screaming horse's ass!"[6]

The movie was partly filmed in and around Dallas, Texas, in some cases using reputed locations of banks that the real Bonnie and Clyde were to have robbed at gunpoint.[9]

The poem that Bonnie Parker is reading as the police raid their hideout is 'The Story of Suicide Sal',[1], one of only two poems by the real Bonnie Parker known to exist (The other is 'The Trail's End', also known as 'The Story of Bonnie and Clyde'[2]; which she is shown reading out loud later in the film).

Reception

Warner Bros.-Seven Arts had so little faith in the film that, in a then-unprecedented move, they offered its first-time producer Warren Beatty 40% of the gross instead of a minimal fee. The movie then went on to gross over $70 million worldwide by 1973.

The film was controversial on its original release for its supposed glorification of murderers, and for its level of graphic violence and gore, which was unprecedented at the time. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was so appalled that he began to campaign against the increasing brutality of American films.[10] In addition, the film was criticized by many reviewers for making the subject matter too comical. Dave Kaufman of Variety also criticized the film for uneven direction and for portraying Bonnie and Clyde as bumbling fools.[11]

Awards and honors

Academy Awards

Estelle Parsons won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Blanche Barrow, Clyde's sister-in-law, and Burnett Guffey won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

The film was also nominated for:

Others

In 1992, Bonnie and Clyde was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

American Film Institute recognition In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Bonnie and Clyde was acknowledged as the fifth best in the gangster film genre.[12]

Influence

Some critics cite Joseph H. Lewis's Gun Crazy, a 1950 film noir about a bank-robbing couple, as a major influence on Bonnie and Clyde. Forty years after its premiere, Bonnie and Clyde has been cited as a major influence in such disparate films as The Wild Bunch, The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs and The Departed.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ Louis Gianetti, Flashback: A Brief History of Film, 5th edtn (Pearson, 2006), p. 306.
  2. ↑ The Movies by Richard Griffith, Arthur Mayer, and Eileen Bowser. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981 edition.
  3. ↑ Giannetti, Flashback, p. 307.
  4. ↑ Giannetti, Flashback, p. 307.
  5. ↑ Toubiana, Serge and de Baecque, Antoine. Truffaut: A Biography. New York: Knopf (1999) ISBN 0375400893
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Movie & Trivia
  7. ↑ Sinclair, Molly no title Post (unknown location), ndg
  8. ↑ James, Ann "Bonnie and Clyde driver loses life to shotgun blast" Post (unknown location) (August 21, year not legible)
  9. ↑ Movie & Trivia
  10. ↑ Gianetti, Flashback, p. 306.
  11. ↑ Kaufman, Dave "Bonnie and Clyde" (review) Variety (August 1967)
  12. ↑ "AFI's 10 Top 10", American Film Institute (2008-06-17). Retrieved on 2008-06-18. 
  13. ↑ Two Outlaws, Blasting Holes in the Screen; A. O. Scott, New York Times, 2007-12-08; Accessed 2007-12-08

External links

Films directed by Arthur Penn

Penn & Teller Get Killed • Dead of Winter • Target • Four Friends • The Missouri Breaks • Night Moves • Little Big Man • Alice's Restaurant • Bonnie and Clyde • The Chase • Mickey One • The Miracle Worker • The Left Handed Gun