Bonnie and Clyde"New Hollywood", heralded by the clarion call of banjos and gunfire. In 1967, Warner Bros. released Bonnie and Clyde, a bold departure from the studio system preceding it, a sharp and telling tale of a pair of frustrated young lovers--the eponymous Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway)--in the malaise of a post-Depression Era Midwest, eager for excitement, danger, love, and even just life itself. Unfortunately, their idea of a good time in these economically depressed times usually involves some crime, leading to armed robbery, grand theft auto, or--when pressed--murder.
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Clyde Barrow fancies himself something of a modern-day Robin Hood...or at least he reaches that conclusion because, frankly, it's a convenient justification for his misfit behavior. The world of Bonnie and Clyde is our own, albeit one of many decades past, when the financial security of the United States crumbled under the weight of the Great Depression, and areas like the Midwest--farming and rural areas--were hit the worst. For Clyde, what's the point of taking on a job--if he could even get one--just to end up working for a pittance? No...as he says about other things, he "never saw the percentage in it". After robbing a grocery store to impress the lovely Bonnie Parker--perhaps to make up for failing to steal her mama's car--and then holing up in a foreclosed house, he and Bonnie are visited by the former residents of the homestead. When the pitiable patriarch informs Clyde that the bank took their home (we see them living out of their car), Clyde heroically proclaims that he and Bonnie "rob banks" (note: they haven't robbed any banks yet). Why grandstand? Why leap to the forefront as a champion of the downtrodden? Well, Clyde's number one talent--well, maybe number two...he is a hell of a shootist--is his propensity to sell himself as bigger than life, drawing him and Bonnie into a spiral of danger where he is too proud not to put himself into those positions to live up those expectations. As Bonnie observes, his "advertising is just dandy...too bad [he doesn't] have anything to sell." And though Clyde has turned Bonnie on something fierce with his bravado and charisma, the truth is that Clyde simply can't "deliver", a fact he lies to his brother Buck (Gene Hackman) about later. Clyde's sexual difficulties are never fully explained, although they allude to the (later debunked) claim that he was in reality a homosexual. When the time comes, his ability to consummate his relationship with Bonnie has to do with her craft as a poet, and her love for him--immortalizing him, accepting him, maybe even just a matter of trust.
Bonnie Parker is a smart girl...at least smarter than her companions in all fairness. So why then does she allow--nay, desire--life-threatening danger to enter her world, throwing away whatever previous life she had, so she could run from hotel to hotel, stealing cars, getting into gunfights with the law? Because she wants more, and she's right--life in West Dallas, Texas in 1930 was not Hollywood, and Miss Bonnie Parker knows it. When Clyde give her his pitch about her life as a waitress, surrounded by dullards and creeps being beneath her, he's singing her song, and she wants that better life, and is willing to pay the price for glitz and glamour. While hiding out in a movie theater after their first big bank job goes wrong, courtesy of newcomer C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) parking the getaway car, she stares in rapt attention to the silver screen, images of luxurious dancers in bright, fancy costumes singing the bitterly ironic song, "We're In the Money". The irony may be lost on Bonnie, but she is nevertheless in love with the Hollywood ideal. Later on, we see her trying on a shiny necklace, adjusting her hat, rehearsing the dance steps and singing the same song. She needs this life; like a fire in her soul, it burns hot, and she's not going back to her boring life cleaning tables ever again--she'd rather die. And Bonnie is a writer, a poet, who crafts rhymes about people, including her and Clyde most profoundly. She may not be Emily Dickinson, but considering she probably never graduated high school, she does alright. Bonnie's need to express herself and her desire to create art is lost on the majority of the Barrow Gang, who find more entertainment in games of checkers and Buck's corny jokes. But her poems represent a part of her that we as the audience can identify with, a need for more than taking the world at face value, a hunger for art and deeper thought. And though Bonnie is frustrated with Clyde's inability to satisfy her sexually--Dede Allen's masterful editing conveys this in such an inspired way--she stays on with him, no longer simply out of lust, but out of a burgeoning love for her kindred spirit.
Recommended for: Fans of an exciting action movie that plays fast and loose with history, a cynical--but humorous--"Robin Hood" tale of disaffected youth, bank robberies and gunfights, and a pair of doomed lovers you can't help but like.
Bonnie Parker is a smart girl...at least smarter than her companions in all fairness. So why then does she allow--nay, desire--life-threatening danger to enter her world, throwing away whatever previous life she had, so she could run from hotel to hotel, stealing cars, getting into gunfights with the law? Because she wants more, and she's right--life in West Dallas, Texas in 1930 was not Hollywood, and Miss Bonnie Parker knows it. When Clyde give her his pitch about her life as a waitress, surrounded by dullards and creeps being beneath her, he's singing her song, and she wants that better life, and is willing to pay the price for glitz and glamour. While hiding out in a movie theater after their first big bank job goes wrong, courtesy of newcomer C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) parking the getaway car, she stares in rapt attention to the silver screen, images of luxurious dancers in bright, fancy costumes singing the bitterly ironic song, "We're In the Money". The irony may be lost on Bonnie, but she is nevertheless in love with the Hollywood ideal. Later on, we see her trying on a shiny necklace, adjusting her hat, rehearsing the dance steps and singing the same song. She needs this life; like a fire in her soul, it burns hot, and she's not going back to her boring life cleaning tables ever again--she'd rather die. And Bonnie is a writer, a poet, who crafts rhymes about people, including her and Clyde most profoundly. She may not be Emily Dickinson, but considering she probably never graduated high school, she does alright. Bonnie's need to express herself and her desire to create art is lost on the majority of the Barrow Gang, who find more entertainment in games of checkers and Buck's corny jokes. But her poems represent a part of her that we as the audience can identify with, a need for more than taking the world at face value, a hunger for art and deeper thought. And though Bonnie is frustrated with Clyde's inability to satisfy her sexually--Dede Allen's masterful editing conveys this in such an inspired way--she stays on with him, no longer simply out of lust, but out of a burgeoning love for her kindred spirit.
Recommended for: Fans of an exciting action movie that plays fast and loose with history, a cynical--but humorous--"Robin Hood" tale of disaffected youth, bank robberies and gunfights, and a pair of doomed lovers you can't help but like.