Bonnie and Clyde

This week’s screening was Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Bonnie and Clyde stars classic Hollywood beauties Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as characters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. This biographical crime film tells the story of the Barrow Gang—and American gang notorious for bank robberies during the Great Depression—and more specifically, Bonnie and Clyde.

The film begins with an instant spark between characters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The pair meets when Clyde tries to steel Bonnie’s mom’s car. She is immediately intrigued and, bored by her banal life in Texas, soon becomes his partner in crime. The characters have intense chemistry and the movie oozes sensuality. When Bonnie and Clyde initially meet, they converse over bottles of Coke, and the scene drips sex. I thought Dunaway captured the longing and boredom of a small-town girl perfectly in their exchange, where she suggestively drinks her Coke.

After this exchange, the pair hits the road and soon picks up gas station attendant C.W. Moss, played by Michael J. Pollard, and link up with Clyde’s older brother Buck (Gene Heckman), and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons). The gang promotes from amateur heists to bank robberies, sometimes with casualties. The Barrow gang is pursued by law enforcement, and are seen multiple times in very tight situations.

Throughout the film, the audience builds and bond with the gang, and more specifically Bonnie and Clyde. We see the denouement of an epic love story, and witness Bonnie and Clyde’s passion and complementary temperaments. The film paves the way for the audience to fall in love with the characters—and their love affair—until the pair is slaughtered in what I am going to call one of the most soul-shattering scenes I have ever seen.

As expected as their downfall was, I was so taken aback by the abrupt end to their story that I couldn’t even muster up the tears to cry. Frank Hamer, played by Denver Pyle, a law enforcer that the gang had previously humiliated locates Bonnie and Clyde laying low at Moss’s father’s house, and strikes a bargain with Moss’s father. Hamer offers leniency on Moss, if he helps Hamer set a trap to catch Bonnie and Clyde.

At the peak of Bonnie and Clyde’s on-screen love for each other—sharing a pear and laughing—they are stopped by Moss’s father, and ambushed by a shower of bullets. The seconds before the violent explosion of bullets seems like it lasts forever. Bonnie and Clyde share one last look that expresses everything: their life together, their adventure, their love for each other.

Despite being set in the 30s, it is so obvious that this film was made in the 60s. It’s difficult not to notice the blatant influence that the French New Wave had on this film, both in terms of visual style, as well as editing. All-in-all, it’s easy to see why this film is seen as one of the most important films of American cinema.