Bonnie and Clyde is considered one of the first films of the New Hollywood era and a landmark picture. It broke many cinematic taboos and for some members of the counterculture, the film was considered a "rallying cry".[3] Its success prompted other filmmakers to be more open in presenting sex and violence in their films. The film's ending became famous as "one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history".[4]
During the Great Depression, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker of Texas meet when Clyde tries to steal Bonnie's mother's car. Bonnie, who is bored by her job as a waitress, is intrigued by Clyde and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime. They pull off some holdups, but their amateur efforts, while exciting, are not very lucrative. Bonnie and Clyde turn from small-time heists to bank robbing.
The duo's crime spree shifts into high gear once they hook up with a dim-witted gas station attendant, C.W. Moss. Their exploits also become more violent. After C.W. botches parking during a bank robbery and delays their escape, Clyde shoots the bank manager in the face when he jumps onto the slow-moving car's running board. Clyde's older brother Buck and his wife, Blanche, a preacher's daughter, also join them. The two women dislike each other at first sight, and their antipathy escalates. Blanche has nothing but disdain for Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W., while Bonnie sees Blanche's flightiness as a constant danger to the gang's survival.
In Joplin, Missouri, local police show up at the gang's rented house after being alerted by a grocery delivery boy; two policemen are killed in a shootout. The gang is pursued by law enforcement, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, whom they capture and humiliate before setting him free. The five outlaws then pull a heist, during which a police chase disables their vehicle. They steal Eugene Grizzard's car and take him and his girlfriend captive before quickly abandoning them when they learn he is an undertaker.
Bonnie wants to visit her family in Texas and give them part of the heist funds, to which Clyde reluctantly acquiesces despite the risk. The gang is caught off guard by an ambush by law enforcement overnight, resulting in many casualties. Buck is mortally wounded by a shot to his head, and Blanche is injured in one eye, losing sight in it. Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W. barely escape alive, while Blanche falls into police custody. Hamer then tricks her into revealing C.W.'s name (until then he was only an "unidentified suspect").
C.W. takes the wounded Bonnie and Clyde to hide out at the house of his father Ivan, who thinks the couple have corrupted his son (as evidenced by an ornate tattoo Bonnie convinced C.W. to get). The elder Moss makes a deal with Hamer: in exchange for leniency for C.W., he sets a trap for the outlaws. When Bonnie and Clyde stop on the side of the road to help Mr. Moss fix a flat tire, as a nearby flock of birds flies away, the posse in the bushes gun the couple down. Hamer and his men come out of hiding and gather around the couple's bodies.
Actor Gene Wilder in his film debut portrayed Eugene Grizzard, one of Bonnie and Clyde's hostages. His girlfriend Velma Davis was played by Evans Evans.
The family gathering scene was filmed in Red Oak, Texas. Several residents gathered to watch. When the filmmakers noticed Mabel Cavitt, a local schoolteacher, among the people gathered, she was cast as Bonnie Parker's mother.[8][9]
Production and style
Advertisement from 1967
The film was intended as a romantic and comic version of the violent gangster films of the 1930s, updated with modern filmmaking techniques.[10] Arthur Penn portrayed some of the violent scenes with a comic tone, sometimes reminiscent of Keystone Cops-style slapstick films, then shifted disconcertingly into horrific and graphic violence.[11] The film has the French New Wave directors' influence, both in its rapid shifts of tone, and in its choppy editing, which is particularly noticeable in its closing sequence.[11][12]
The first handling of the script was in the early 1960s. Influenced by the French New Wave writers and not yet completed, Newman and Benton sent Penn an early draft. He already was engaged in production decisions for The Chase (1966) and could not get involved in the script for Bonnie and Clyde. The writers sent their script to François Truffaut, who made contributions but passed on the project, next directing Fahrenheit 451.[13] At Truffaut's suggestion, the writers, much excited (the film's producers were less so), approached filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.[14]
Some sources claim Godard did not trust Hollywood and refused. Benton claimed that Godard wanted to shoot the film in New Jersey in January during the winter. He purportedly took offense when would-be producer Norah Wright objected that his desire was unreasonable, as the story took place in Texas, which has a warm climate year-round.[15] Her partner Elinor Jones[16] claimed the two did not believe Godard was right for the project in the first place. Godard's retort: «Je vous parle de cinéma, vous me parlez de météo. Au revoir.» ("I'm talking cinema and you're talking weather. Goodbye.")[17] After the 1968 Academy Awards, Godard sent Benton and Newman a cable that read, "Now, let's make it all over again!"[18]
Soon after the failed negotiations for production, Beatty was visiting Paris and learned through Truffaut of the project and its path. On returning to Hollywood, Beatty requested to see the script and bought the rights. A meeting with Godard was not productive. Beatty changed his approach and convinced the writers that while the script at first reading was very much of the French New Wave style, an American director was necessary for the subject.[19]
When Beatty was on board as producer only, his sister and actress Shirley MacLaine was a strong possibility to play Bonnie. When Beatty decided to play Clyde, they needed a different actress. Considered for the role were Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, Sharon Tate, Leslie Caron, Carol Lynley and Sue Lyon.[21]Cher auditioned for the part, and Beatty begged Natalie Wood to play the role. Wood declined, to concentrate on her therapy, and acknowledged that working with Beatty before had been "difficult". Faye Dunaway later said that she won the part "by the skin of her teeth!"[citation needed]
The film is forthright in its handling of sexuality, but that theme was toned down from its conception. Originally, Benton and Newman wrote Clyde as bisexual. He and Bonnie were to have a three-way sexual relationship with their male getaway driver. Penn persuaded the writers that since the couple's relationship was underwritten in terms of emotional complexity, it dissipated the passion of the title characters. This would threaten the audience's sympathy for the characters, and might result in their being written off as sexual deviants because they were criminals. Others said that Beatty was unwilling to have his character display that kind of sexuality and that the Production Code would never have allowed such content in the first place.[22] Clyde is portrayed as heterosexual and impotent.
Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first films to feature extensive use of squibs—small explosive charges, often mounted with bags of stage blood, that detonate inside an actor's clothes to simulate bullet hits. Released in an era when film shootings were generally depicted as bloodless and painless, the Bonnie and Clyde death scene was one of the first in mainstream American cinema to be depicted with graphic realism.[23]
Beatty originally wanted the film to be shot in black and white, but Warner Bros. rejected the idea. Much of the studio's senior management was hostile to the film, especially Jack L. Warner, who considered the subject matter an unwanted throwback to Warner Bros.' early period when gangster films were a common product.[24] Moreover, Warner was already annoyed at Beatty for refusing to star in PT 109 and defying Warner's favorite gesture of authority of showing the studio water tower with the WB logo on it. Beatty said, "Well, it's got your name, but it's got my initials."[25] Warner complained about the costs of the film's extensive location shooting in Texas, which exceeded its production schedule and budget, and ordered the crew back to the studio backlot. It already had planned to return for final process shots.[26]
Music
"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Flatt and Scruggs, the instrumental banjo piece, was introduced to a worldwide audience as a result of its frequent use in the movie. Its use is anachronistic because bluegrass dates from the mid-1940s rather than the 1930s. But the functionally similar old-time music genre was long established and widely recorded in the period of the film's events.[27] Long out of print in vinyl and cassette formats, the film soundtrack was released on CD in 2009.[28]
The film considerably simplifies the lives of Bonnie and Clyde and their gang. They were allied with other gang members, were repeatedly jailed, and committed other murders. In the part of the movie where Bonnie and Clyde escape the ambush that killed Buck Barrow and captured Blanche, Bonnie is shown being wounded by a deputy sheriff, whom Clyde then kills. Although they escaped the ambush, no lawmen were killed. Between June 1933 and April 1934, however, the Barrow gang did kill three law officers in Texas[29] and Oklahoma.[30]
On the run, they suffered a horrific auto accident in which Parker was severely burned and disabled.[citation needed] In the scene depicting their death, Bonnie and Clyde are portrayed as having stopped their automobile, with Clyde exiting the car and then looking back at Bonnie as they realize they've been trapped, but reports say the car was still moving when lawmen opened fire.
The sequence with Wilder and Evans is based on the Barrow gang's kidnappings of undertaker H.D. Darby and his acquaintance Sophia Stone, near Ruston, Louisiana, on April 27, 1933. The real Darby and Stone were not romantically involved. The gang also stole Darby's car.[31][pageneeded]
The film is considered to stray far from fact in its portrayal of Frank Hamer as a vengeful bungler who was captured, humiliated, and released by Bonnie and Clyde. Hamer was a decorated Texas Ranger when he was coaxed out of semi-retirement to hunt the couple down. He had never met them before he and his posse ambushed and killed them near Gibsland, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934.[32] In 1968, Hamer's widow and son sued the movie producers for defamation of character over his portrayal. They obtained an out-of-court settlement in 1971.[33]
Bonnie and Clyde & Faye and Warren
In 1932 "shotgun photo", Bonnie Parker points at Clyde Barrow; 1966 photo shows publicity reenactment with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.
In 1933, police found undeveloped film in Bonnie and Clyde's hastily abandoned hideout in Joplin, Missouri. When they printed the negatives, one showed Bonnie holding a gun in her hand and a cigar between her teeth. Its publication nationwide typed her as a dramatic gun moll. The film portrays the taking of this playful photo. It implies the gang sent photos—and poetry—to the press, but this is untrue. The police found most of the gang's items in the Joplin cache. Bonnie's final poem, read aloud by her in the movie, was not published until after her death, when her mother released it.[34]
The only two surviving members of the Barrow Gang when the film was released in 1967 were Blanche Barrow and W.D. Jones. While Barrow had approved the depiction of her in the original script, she objected to the later rewrites. At the film's release, she complained about Estelle Parsons's portrayal of her, saying, "That film made me look like a screaming horse's ass!"[35]
At first, Warner Bros. did not promote Bonnie and Clyde[12] for general release, but mounted only limited regional releases that seemed to confirm its misgivings about the film's lack of commercial appeal. The film quickly did excellent sustained business in select urban theatres.[37] While Jack Warner was selling the studio to Seven Arts Productions, he would have dumped the film but for the fact that Israel, of which Warner was a major supporter, had recently triumphed in the Six-Day War. Warner was feeling too defiant to sell any of his studio's films.[38]
Meanwhile, Beatty complained to Warner Bros. that if the company was willing to go to so much trouble for Reflections in a Golden Eye (it had changed the coloration scheme at considerable expense), their neglect of his film, which was getting excellent press, suggested a conflict of interest; he threatened to sue the company. Warner Bros. gave Beatty's film a general release. Much to the surprise of Warner Bros.' management, the film became a major box-office success.[39]
Reception and legacy
The film was controversial at the time of release because of its apparent glorification of murderers, and for its level of graphic violence, which was unprecedented at the time. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie."[40][41] He was so appalled that he began to campaign against the increasing brutality of American films.[42]
Dave Kaufman of Variety criticized the film for uneven direction and for portraying Bonnie and Clyde as bumbling moronic types.[36]Joe Morgenstern in Newsweek initially panned the film as a "squalid shoot-'em-up for the moron trade", but after seeing it a second time and noting the enthusiastic audience, he wrote a second article saying he had misjudged the film and praised it.[43] Warner Bros. took advantage of this, marketing the film as having made a major critic change his mind about its virtues.[44]
[A]s a re-creation of reality, Bonnie and Clyde can only be described as dishonest... neither Faye Dunaway nor Warren Beatty acts in a proper Thirties mode, nor do they seem to understand the feelings of the desperate and the underprivileged. The actress' willowy modern charm is no more appropriate to the lethal, serpentine coldness of the real Bonnie Parker than the actors' sensitive, matinee idol's looks have the right style for the shoddy vanity of Clyde Barrow.
—Film historian Charles Higham in The Art of the American Film: 1900-1971. (1973).[45]
Roger Ebert gave Bonnie and Clyde a positive review, giving it four stars out of four. He called the film "a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance", adding, "It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life."[46][40] More than 30 years later, Ebert added the film to his list The Great Movies, writing: "The movie opened like a slap in the face. American filmgoers had never seen anything like it."[47] Film critics Dave Kehr and James Berardinelli have praised the film.[48][49]Stephen Hunter, writing in Commentary in 2009, criticized the film's failure to adhere to the historical truth about Barrow, Parker, and Hamer.[50]
The film was not expected to perform well at the box office but was a sleeper hit and by year's end had earned $2.5million in theatrical rentals in the US and Canada.[1][52] It continued to perform well in 1968 and by March 1968 had been in the top 12 films at the US box office for 22 weeks.[53] By the end of 1968 it had become the studio's second highest-grossing film of all time, behind My Fair Lady, with rentals of $19 million.[54][55] By July 1968, the film had earned rentals of $10 million outside of the US and Canada.[1] Listal lists it as one of the top five grossing films of 1967, with $50.7 million in US sales, and $70 million worldwide.[56] Beatty's profit participation (which he shared with Penn) earned him over $6 million and Penn over $2 million.[1]
Although many believe the film's groundbreaking portrayal of violence adds to the film's artistic merit, Bonnie and Clyde is still sometimes criticized for opening the floodgates to heightened graphic violence in cinema and TV.[57] It holds a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 67 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The site's consensus states: "A paradigm-shifting classic of American cinema, Bonnie and Clyde packs a punch whose power continues to reverberate through thrillers decades later."[58]
The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.[59]
In 1992, Bonnie and Clyde was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[7]
In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild ranked the film the fifth best-edited film of all time, based on a survey of its membership.[69]
Influence
A replica, made for the film, of the Ford V8 in which Bonnie and Clyde died, is on display at the Alcatraz East museum
Henry Warren Beatty is an American actor and filmmaker. His career has spanned over six decades, and he has received an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received the Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1999, the BAFTA Fellowship in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2007, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2008.
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut "Champion" Barrow were American bandits who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. The couple were known for their bank robberies and multiple murders, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. Their exploits captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is occasionally referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. They were ambushed by police and shot dead in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.
Dorothy Faye Dunaway is an American actress. She is the recipient of many accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a BAFTA Award. In 2011, the government of France made her an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters.
The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The plot concerns an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico–United States border trying to adapt to the changing modern world of 1913. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any available means.
Bugsy is a 1991 American biographical crime drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by James Toback. The film stars Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould, Bebe Neuwirth, and Joe Mantegna. It is based on the life of American mobster Bugsy Siegel and his affair with starlet Virginia Hill.
The New Hollywood, Hollywood Renaissance, American New Wave, or New American Cinema, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of filmmakers came to prominence. They influenced the types of film produced, their production and marketing, and the way major studios approached filmmaking. In New Hollywood films, the film director, rather than the studio, took on a key authorial role.
Arthur Hiller Penn was an American filmmaker, theatre director, and producer. He was a Tony Award winner, and was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Director, as well as a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, two Primetime Emmys. As a member of the New Hollywood movement, Penn directed several critically-acclaimed films dealing with countercultural issues of the late 1960s and 1970s, notably the drama The Chase (1966), the biographical crime film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the comedy Alice's Restaurant (1969), and the revisionist Western Little Big Man (1970).
Night Moves is a 1975 American neo-noir film directed by Arthur Penn, and starring Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Susan Clark, with supporting performances from Melanie Griffith and James Woods. Its plot follows a Los Angeles private investigator who uncovers a series of sinister events while searching for the missing teenage daughter of a former movie actress.
Burnett Guffey, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer.
Francis Augustus Hamer was an American lawman and Texas Ranger who led the 1934 posse that tracked down and killed criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Renowned for his toughness, marksmanship, and investigative skill, he acquired status in the Southwest as the archetypal Texas Ranger. He was inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. His professional record and reputation are controversial, particularly with regard to his willingness to use extrajudicial killing even in an increasingly modernized society.
You Only Live Once is a 1937 American crime drama film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda. Considered an early film noir, the film was the second directed by Lang in the United States. At least 15 minutes were trimmed from the original 100-minute version of the film due to its then unprecedented violence. Despite the removal of such scenes, the film is widely considered an early film noir classic. The film is also known for being one of the first box-office bombs.
William Daniel Jones was a member of the Barrow Gang, whose crime spree throughout the southern Midwest in the early years of the Great Depression became part of American criminal folklore. Jones ran with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker for eight and a half months, from Christmas Eve 1932 to early September 1933. He and another gang member named Henry Methvin were consolidated into the "C.W. Moss" character in the film Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Of the character C.W. Moss in the movie, Jones said: "Moss was a dumb kid who run errands and done what Clyde told him. That was me, all right."
Blanche Barrow was the wife of the elder brother of Clyde Barrow, known as Buck. He became her second husband after his release from prison after a pardon. To her dismay, Buck joined his brother's gang. Blanche was present at the shootout which resulted in the Barrow Gang becoming nationally recognized fugitives. She spent only four months with the gang.
The Barrow Gang was an American gang active between 1932 and 1934. They were well known outlaws, robbers, murderers, and criminals who, as a gang, traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits were known all over the nation. They captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is sometimes referred to as the 'public enemy era'. Though the gang was notorious for the bank robberies they committed, they preferred to rob small stores or gas stations over banks. The gang was believed to have killed at least nine police officers, among several other murders.
Wayne Fitzgerald was an American film title designer. Over a career that spanned 55 years, he designed close to five hundred motion picture and television main and end title sequences for top directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, John Huston, Mike Nichols, Robert Redford, Roman Polanski, Arthur Penn, Michael Cimino, Warren Beatty, Herbert Ross, John Hughes, and Quentin Tarantino.
Bulldog Drummond's Bride is an American crime comedy thriller film produced in 1939. It was the last film of Paramount Pictures' Bulldog Drummond film series.
Henry Methvin was an American criminal, a bank robber, and a Depression-era outlaw. He is best remembered as the final member of Bonnie and Clyde's gang. His role in the gang has often been misattributed to teenage gang member W.D. Jones as both men were portrayed as composite character "C.W. Moss" in the film Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
The Bonnie Parker Story is a 1958 crime film directed by William Witney. The movie is loosely based on the life of Bonnie Parker, a well-known outlaw of the 1930s. The film stars Dorothy Provine as Parker; Parker's actual historical partner, Clyde Barrow, is renamed Guy Darrow for the film's story, and played by Jack Hogan. The film was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Machine Gun Kelly starring Charles Bronson in his first leading role.
Bonnie & Clyde is a revisionist 2013 miniseries about Great Depression-era outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow starring Emile Hirsch as Clyde Barrow and Holliday Grainger as Bonnie Parker. The two-part series aired on consecutive nights, December 8 and 9, 2013, simultaneously on A&E, History, and Lifetime. The first previews were released on September 23, 2013. The series was widely criticized for its historical inaccuracies, particularly as it was aired on History.
The Highwaymen is a 2019 American period crime thriller film directed by John Lee Hancock and written by John Fusco. The film stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, two former Texas Rangers who attempt to track down and apprehend notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde in the 1930s. Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, Kim Dickens, Thomas Mann and William Sadler also star.
References
1 2 3 4 5 "Warren Beatty 'Bonnie' Share May Hit $6,300,000; He Gave Arthur Penn 10%". Variety. August 8, 1968. p.1.
↑ Barrow, Blanche Caldwell, edited by John Neal Phillips (2005). My Life with Bonnie and Clyde. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN0-8061-3625-1.
↑ Guinn, Jeff (2009). Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-1-4165-5706-7.
↑ Guinn, Jeff (2009). Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 364. ISBN1-4165-5706-7
Desilet, Gregory (2005). "Modern 'Noir' Melodrama: Bonnie and Clyde". Our Faith in Evil: Melodrama and the Effects of Entertainment Violence. McFarland. pp.288–298. ISBN078642348X.
Leggett, B.J. (2005). "Convergence and Divergence in the Movie Review: Bonnie and Clyde". Film Criticism. 30 (2): 1–23. JSTOR24777277.
Bonnie and Clyde essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 626–627
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