Warner Bros, 1967, 112 minutes
Starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael C. Pollard, Gene Hackman, Esther Parsons, Denver Pyle, Gene Wilder
Written by David Newman and Robert Benton
Produced by Warren Beatty
Directed by Arthur Penn

Buy or rent this movie.

At one point in the movie, the well-dressed outlaws stroll into a bank and confidently announce “This is the Barrow gang. We rob banks.” It would have been more accurate to say “we rob gas stations.” The script employs the usual supermarket approach to outlaw movies, although it is clear that the screenwriters did their research. Several scenes in the movie recreate actual photos of the outlaws, such as the famous picture of Bonnie posing with a gun and the scene where Buck and Blanche are captured in the field near the end of the movie. There is even a scene where Bonnie reads out loud her poem Suicide Sal. However, even though the writers knew what Bonnie and Clyde were, they still chose to glorify them. Any part of the real history that is detrimental to the characters’ image is removed, including Bonnie being badly burned in a car accident, and the grocery store owners and law officers that ended up six feet under because of Clyde’s jittery trigger finger. Furthermore, the gang captures Frank Hamer of the Texas Rangers when he was in Missouri hunting after the reward, and Hamer is played cold and hard by Denver Pyle, which is a deliberate attempt to vilify him, since he actually gave up a much more lucrative position to lead the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde.

One scene in particular shows the difference between Beatty’s fantasy and the real Barrow. Clyde is robbing a small grocery store, and when the owner attacks with a meat cleaver Clyde manages to subdue him, although the real Clyde panicked and shot a grocery store owner who did just that. Beatty’s Clyde is mystified that the grocer wanted to kill him for stealing a few dollars, but seems to forget that it was the Depression, when everyone was poor and struggling to survive. The film continues to try to portray them as robbing only from the rich by showing them letting farmers keep their money when they rob a bank, but neglects to consider that the farmers’ savings were in the bank.

Credit and blame belong equally to Warren Beatty. It was his movie and he managed every aspect, choosing the actors, almost all of whom were talented unknowns. Francois Truffaut originally had the script for Bonnie and Clyde, which he let Beatty’s then girlfriend Leslie Caron look at. Beatty fell in love with the script and bought the rights without informing Truffaut. The screenwriters, Robert Benton and David Newman, had intentionally written a script to epater le burgeois, which basically means shake up the squares. Ah, those crazy rebellious kids.

This was the first time that Beatty produced a movie and he brought in his friend Robert Towne to tailor the script to fit him. Towne eventually became one of the top script doctors in Hollywood, which explains the excellent dialogue. Benton and Newman’s homosexual affair between Clyde and Moss was unsurprisingly deleted from the script. Naturally, Beatty’s Clyde is a crack shot, who shoots guns out of people’s hands and always remains calm, shooting the hat off a bank guard’s head as a warning when he makes a move for his gun. However, he is not your stereotypical macho tough guy, he is sensitive because he can’t get it up.

There is a Hollywood legend that Beatty’s track record was so poor that he had to kiss Jack Warner’s feet to get even a budget of two million dollars (considered modest at the time) for the film. Warner had so little faith in the movie that he promised Beatty 40% of the gross, so he must have felt slightly foolish when the film became a massive hit. There is no denying that it is a beautiful film, Penn was given great sets and he made the most of them. The movie was unlike anything that had preceded it, and its success helped usher in the New Hollywood era. Part of the reason for the movie’s success was that the supporting actors were not the usual Hollywood faces but were from New York. Also, the love scenes are quite graphic for the 1960’s, at one point Bonnie was giving Clyde a blow job.

It is a beautiful film with a horrible, repulsive message that is an inexcusable glorification of trigger happy outlaws.



Buy or rent this movie.

Share this page with others: