Movie Description

No movie proved more shocking to middle-class values or aroused more controversy in the 1960s than Arthur Penn's saga of 1930s violence, Bonnie & Clyde. Set in rural Texas during the Great Depression, the film touched youthful audiences who identified with the outlaws heroes, while angering conservatives with its on-screen violence and displays of sexuality. The conflicting responses highlighted the "generation gap" of the tumultuous decade.

The film opens with a sequence of black and white photographs that evoke the documentary style of Depression-era photographers, such as Dorothea Lange. [See AJ, Photos of Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and Ben Shahn.] These images place the characters in the stark dustbowl setting that also gave birth to the fictional characters of John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Bonnie Parker (played by Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrows (played by Warren Beatty) were real people who went on a two-year crime spree between 1932 and 1934, robbing banks, gas stations, and groceries in ten states and killing bystanders. Two paragraphs of text establish their low economic background and Clyde's criminal record, slightly altering the facts. (The real Clyde had not served time in prison when he met Bonnie.)

The movie proceeds to tell a fictionalized version of the young criminals' escapades. They meet when the near-naked Bonnie glances out her bedroom window and spots Clyde, who is about to steal her mother's car. They head to a café for cokes. "What do you think I am?" she asks coyly. "A waitress," he replies with dead accuracy. When Clyde shows off his pistol, she caresses the weapon with a not-so subtle sexual response and asks if he's got "the gumption to use it." He proves his prowess by robbing a store.

The crime arouses Bonnie's passions. But Clyde is not interested in sex; "ain't much of a lover boy," he admits. Clyde offers Bonnie something else, equally passionate: the opportunity to escape the dull life of a waitress in West Dallas, "and everybody'd know about it." He talks about silk dresses and fine restaurants. "You got a right to that," he says. "You might be the best damn girl in Texas."

Clyde teaches Bonnie how to handle a gun and they embark on their career: "We rob banks." In Depression Texas some banks are already without funds, and Clyde's efforts are inept, even humorous. They pick up a strange sidekick, C.W. Moss (Michael Pollard), whose simplicity adds a dash of innocence to their ambitions. But while fleeing from a bank robbery, Clyde kills a pursuer, and the tone of the movie abruptly changes. "You ain't gonna have a minute's peace," Clyde warns Bonnie. "You promise?" she replies.

With the law in pursuit, the threesome are joined by Clyde's brother, Buck (Gene Hackman), also an ex-convict, and his wife, Blanche (Estelle Parsons), whose hysteria stand as a foil for Bonnie's coolness. When Texas Ranger Frank Hamer nearly catches them, they turn the tables and humiliate him by photographing him under "arrest." Bonnie poses with a cigar in her mouth--an act that 1930s newspaper readers considered repulsive, but which may have appealed to some women thirty years later.

Back on the road, the outlaws fool around, steal cars, and happily kidnap a young couple they find smooching in a car. It appears like playful fun, especially when the young man (played by Gene Wilder) learns that his fiancé is, at 33, older than he is (echoing the 1960s youth culture's motto: "Don't trust anyone over 30"). But when the man admits that he is a mortician, the laughing stops. A sentimental family reunion cannot overcome their desperation. "We're gonna quit this just as soon as we can," Clyde assures Bonnie's mother. "You best keep running," she answers. "And you know it."

Although the lovers resolve to be "family," their romance is doomed. Cornered by the police, the outlaws refuse to surrender, sparking an armed attack that seemed in the 1960s to mirror the overkill tactics of the Vietnam War. The fleeing gang obtains assistance from some uprooted farmers who are heading west, before finding sanctuary at C.W. Moss's farmhouse. There, while recuperating, Bonnie and Clyde at last achieve sexual fulfillment.

But the prospect of a normal life is impossible. Betrayed again, Bonnie and Clyde are caught in an ambush and killed in another display of police firepower. Director Penn acknowledged that some details of the scene were based on the murder of President John F. Kennedy.

Bonnie and Clyde