#662: Bonnie and Clyde
Once the faces of outlaw love, now the icons of New Hollywood
Initial release: August 4, 1967
Director: Arthur Penn
The Hays Code was adopted in 1930, and enforced in 1934, as a response to a growing sense in the public and in government that Hollywood was a lawless cesspit of debauchery and scandal. The truth is more complicated, but the end result was incredibly stifling to film as an art form in the United States for thirty years. And then came the 1960s. After the Holocaust, the atom bomb, the subsequent terror of nuclear conflict, and the Vietnam War, trying to censor films in the name of decency just looked silly in the face of such real-world obscenity. By 1966, under the weight of Supreme Court decisions, an influx of European films that suffered no such censorship, the Code’s 1956 revision and its increasingly lax enforcement, and a fresh, younger generation that simply had different priorities than their parents, the Hays Code was so much dead weight — and the office that enforced it was closed. 1967 was thus a banner year for Hollywood directors, the dawn of a new era, a New Hollywood. And the film that most exemplified the new enthusiasm for artistic freedom in Hollywood? Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde.
It is ironic that, after the Hays Code’s implementation in large part due to gangster films, one of the first films to be produced upon its demise was an (at the time) ultraviolent flick that portrays some of the most notorious outlaws of the 1930s as an outgoing, fun-loving power couple and their friends. It feels like a rebuke of decades of Hollywood moralizing, a reflection of a public hunger for films that were more honest, more daring, more in line with the human condition.
So what is Bonnie and Clyde? The story goes back to the 1930s, when Clyde Barrow, a ne’er-do-well who had already been in and out of jail, met Bonnie Parker, a one-time aspiring actress now waiting tables in Dallas. The Great Depression had descended upon America, and people were starving, poor, desperate — the right ingredients for a wave of popular crime. Robbing banks and fighting the law was seen as a heroic act by some — though the nascent FBI didn’t see things that way, of course. Clyde and Bonnie hit it off pretty well by all accounts, and by 1933 they and their gang had already developed a reputation after a string of robberies and murders. They caromed around middle America for a while longer before finally being ambushed — and thoroughly ventilated — by a posse led by a former Texas Ranger who had spent months tracking them. And that was the end of Bonnie and Clyde.
While the movie plays fast and loose with the facts — the character of C.W. is an amalgamation of two real-life figures in the gang, for example — the core of it is rooted in two messed up people, aimless and unhappy in a cruel, uncaring world. FDR posters hint at the future, but for now, people are losing their homes, their livelihoods, and middle America is fast becoming a desolate wasteland. What better time than to rob banks? (Assuming those banks still have money, of course!) Penn makes sure to emphasize the connection between the Great Depression and the Public Enemy era, suggesting that hard times and societal collapse are what makes people like Bonnie and Clyde.
In a lot of ways, the film is Warren Beatty’s project more than Penn’s. He helped write the script and served as producer; he also plays the role of Clyde, and it is when he steps into Clyde’s shoes that he shows just how truly terrific of an actor he is. His Clyde is smooth-talking and oratorical; he’s so full of shit he squeaks, but he’ll make you believe. But underneath his slick looks and genuine relationship with Bonnie he’s a rattlesnake, arguably a psychopath. Faye Dunaway as Bonnie is an entirely different creature, a bright, bored girl who gets a big thrill out of violence and is immediately drawn to Clyde; it’s her Bonnie who is the heart of the gang, the poetry-writing intellectual who dares to wonder what life would have been like if she and Clyde hadn’t become outlaws.
Penn brings a very European style to the film. Bonnie and Clyde is at times choppily edited and paced, all over the place tonally (it’s worth noting that Gene Wilder gets his film debut here) yet somehow manages to make it all work. In this day and age of films like the Susperia remake, the violence in Bonnie and Clyde seems almost quaint, but it was quite daring for its time, being one of the first films to make extensive use of squibs for gunshot wound effects. It was quite controversial for its time, pushing the rapidly-loosening boundaries of what was acceptable in terms of on-screen sex and violence. You could even make the argument that it opened the door for ever greater pushing of the envelope. To which I say — good.
I don’t know that there will ever be a movie quite as impactful as Bonnie and Clyde. It wasn’t just an early example of New Hollywood — it was New Hollywood, representing a sea change in how films were produced in America. But more than that, it existed in the context of the late 1960s, at a time of great social upheaval, telling a story about an earlier point in history when life was just as tumultuous, and in so doing completely upended decades of Hollywood sticking its head in the sand. Does it glamorize Bonnie and Clyde, change them from deviant criminals from the margins of society to beautiful killers fighting against a society that failed them? Yeah, probably. But historical accuracy was never the point — this was a tale of societal alienation in an increasingly alienated society. Same as it ever was.
