Classic Movie Review: Bonnie and Clyde
By Josh Spiegel
August 16, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
When we look into the past, it’s interesting to consider the movies that were considered groundbreaking at the time. One example, the most often used, is the 1941 classic Citizen Kane. As I’ve mentioned in the past, Citizen Kane is a truly groundbreaking film, one that paved the way for filmmakers to use the camera in ways that no one could have imagined before. That said, when people watch it these days, they watch it through the prism of the film being considered the best ever. These people watch and are not sufficiently blown away (something Citizen Kane has spawned is a lot of copies of its structure or biographical nature), and thus are disappointed. There’s so much to consider from the technical aspect, though, so much to appreciate; I’d say the same of the dramatic side of the film, as well.
I’ve prided myself on being able, or on attempting to, separate myself from hype when reviewing some of these movies. So I was left looking for words when I finished watching, for the first time, Bonnie and Clyde. This 1967 drama about two of the most famous gangsters of the Great Depression is considered one of the best American films of the 1960s and something that brought the style of the French New Wave to our shores. Why was I left cold by this film? Part of it is that the progress that is shown off here, mostly thanks to director Arthur Penn, is so minimal that it’s unable to carry the movie. The film starred Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Gene Hackman, so it’s not lacking for good actors. What the movie lacks, mostly on purpose, is momentum.
For those of you who don’t know, or are only vaguely aware of the names, Bonnie and Clyde refers to Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (Dunaway and Beatty). The movie begins with Clyde wooing Bonnie away from her boring life in Texas, partly by trying to steal her mother’s car and partly by robbing a convenience store. He’s a good-looking, daring type, and Bonnie is ready to leave her home at any cost, so he cements his status as a bad boy by holding up the local five-and-dime. From that point on, it’s the fast lane for Bonnie and Clyde; along with a few friends and family, they go around the Midwest, rob banks, kill some people recklessly, and live hard. Of course, the last part of that equation is that they must die young, and boy, do they ever.
Though I was not overwhelmed by Bonnie and Clyde, a movie that seems pretty non-groundbreaking (another movie of the same time period, The Graduate, manages to still feel fresh over four decades later, thanks to its more in-your-face flourishes), it’s a movie worth your time. Not only are Beatty and Dunaway both very good here (something that surprises me, as I’ve never been a big fan of Beatty the actor), they’re joined by Hackman, who mixes some good-ole-boy Southern charm with his typical brutish nature; Estelle Parsons, who plays Hackman’s shrill, obnoxious, and shrewish wife very well, making a stereotypical caricature a little more believable; and Gene Wilder, in his screen debut, in a small but memorable role as one of Bonnie and Clyde’s more charmed hostages. Bonnie and Clyde aren’t the most fascinating characters - their shiftless natures make them a little more passive than they should be, seeing as they’re wielding guns and robbing banks. Still, the world around them is exciting enough to keep the movie going.
There’s always a sense of fatalism seeping through the proceedings here. Even if you’re not familiar with the infamous last scene of Bonnie and Clyde, you can probably guess where the story is going. Even nowadays, with the Production Code long behind us, it’s still kind of rare for the gun-toting thieves to get away with no stains on their souls. One of the bigger problems I have with Bonnie and Clyde is that director Arthur Penn and writers David Newman and Robert Benton do a poor job of heightening the threat of the law. There are cops, sure, but they’re too bumbling to be taken seriously, and not scary enough to be able to take anyone down except themselves. One lawman (Denver Pyle) is meant to be their great nemesis, but he’s in all of ten minutes of the movie, and has barely any lines.
But there is that final scene, which is still shocking, even if we can tell that it’s not really happening. What happens (and this is where I shout spoiler alert to you) is that Bonnie and Clyde die. Again, not a shocking finale. What’s shocking is that a) Bonnie and Clyde are killed in a literal hail of bullets and b) we see all of it. The death scene not only borders, but pushes right into the realm of cartoons as we watch the bodies of Beatty and Dunaway flop around like rag dolls being bounced up and down, an excessive amount of bullets going through their bodies. There’s blood in the scene, but it’s fake; what’s shocking now is that the scene goes on for as long as it does in a movie that is mostly not interested in gore (though there’s an early death that’s striking, to say the least).
You’ve probably seen that ending; it’s the most well-known aspect of Bonnie and Clyde. However, the tone the movie set in previous scenes, mixing backwoods charm with a bit of mocking of redneck culture, along with introspective lead characters, is at odds with the last scene. Obviously, this is how the story went down; I was more than a bit surprised to find out that, yeah, the cops who took down Bonnie and Clyde did use an incredible amount of gunpower. Still, the movie that precedes that scene doesn’t provide enough foreboding. I watched the movie knowing what was coming, not because of the tone of the film or any kind of hints; I knew what was coming because the climax is so well-known. Though the style of the movie is undeniable, it’s also not impressive enough to hide the film’s flaws.
I liked Bonnie and Clyde, but that’s because the movie tries so hard to different than the rest of the movies coming out in Hollywood at the time. If it hadn’t been this movie, something else would have come out in mainstream America and blown off the roof of the French New Wave with its jump-cut editing, fluid photography, distant lead characters, and noir affectations. The movie brought us reminders that Gene Hackman and Gene Wilder started their careers smaller, and it even put forth the notion that Warren Beatty wasn’t a smiling face full of huge teeth (but those teeth are massive). What Bonnie and Clyde is not, at least to me, is timeless. Timelessness helps define classic films like Citizen Kane. Bonnie and Clyde is not timeless, but a film just of its time. Elements still resonate, but the parts and the whole aren’t the same.