7) Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Director: Arthur Penn

Starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Estelle Parsons


I’ve got my wife, Kate, reading Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. So when we sat down to watch a movie tonight she requested Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde.

The film tells the story of legendary American outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who with their gang, travelled through central America during the Great Depression robbing banks. The film follows their entire time together, from their first meeting to their bloody demise (I try not to give away endings in these blogs but I'm pretty sure everyone knows that Bonnie and Clyde died).

While the film follows them on their crime spree, the main focus is on the complex relationship between Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde is presented as a sexually complex character, much more so than had ever been seen in Hollywood cinema before, particularly from a hero character. Clyde warns Bonnie at the very beginning of their relationship that he “ain’t much of a lover-boy,” (meaning he is impotent). The lack of physical intimacy becomes a source of great frustration in their relationship. The film generally sexualises the thrill of crime, portraying crime as alluring and intertwined with sex (see the phallic suggestiveness of the way in which Clyde first shows his gun to an excited Bonnie).

While the frankness in which the film dealt with sexual issues was new to the American screen, it was really the films violence which turned heads when it was released in 1969. Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first films to make extensive use of squibs (the small explosive charges used to simulate bullet hits) which enabled Penn to be much more graphic in the way he portrayed the killings in the film. The tone of the violence in the film is at times light and comical, almost slapstick, but at others it becomes quite dark and horrific (such as the scene in which Budd is killed).

1969 was a real turning point in film production in Hollywood and the evidence of that is clear in Bonnie and Clyde. Not only did this film stand out thematically, with its explorations of sexuality and violence, it looked different. The choppy editing style was much more akin to the editing seen in the French New Wave films than the ‘invisible’ editing common in classical Hollywood, as was the location shooting. Bonnie and Clyde was a very influential film, paving the way for films like The Godfather and The Wild Bunch, and is worth seeing in that regard. But even if you ignore the context which gives it its importance, it is still a very interesting film and worth watching.