Review of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) by Zack F — 10 Feb 2012

A landmark gangster picture that stands up 45 years on thanks to its unflinchingly brutal honesty, babe and bullets classic Bonnie & Clyde is rightly credited with giving a flaming beginning to the Easy Riders/Raging Bull generation. For this reviewer, this film rings with a particularly striking resonance. It was the one motion picture that can be solely credited with making him want to become a filmmaker. And it was all because of an edit. Before going out in a blaze of lawman gunfire, the titular lovers give each other a longing glance that lasts mere seconds...though the hair trigger cutting done by editor Dede Allen makes the moment seem like an eternity. It's one of the many then-revolutionary cogs in a freshly-greased wheel that helped Warner Brothers turn the gangster genre as far away from its own landmark pictures as possible (this ain't Angels with Dirty Faces), squibs, sex, and all.

In this R-rated gangster classic, a fidgety ex-con (Warren Beatty) hooks up with a small-town waitress (Faye Dunaway), which begins a murderous bank robbery spree through the Depression-era Midwest.

Forget that it romanticizes the facts. Robert Benton and David Newman's incendiary screenplay knowingly plays with the events behind a real life kill-crazy couple who channeled their bedroom problems into a blood ballet in the streets indicative of a certain Sexual Revolution about to transpire in the modern day. It helps the quarrelsome anti-heroes are played by Beatty and Dunaway, two actors who would go on to more iconic roles (Beatty: Shampoo; Dunaway: Network), albeit not as perfectly played. Director Arthur Penn seemed to take most of his cues from the edginess made famous years before by the French New Wave, giving the events an agitated sense of urgency and tension indicative of the hell about to pop in the modern day.

Bottom line: Number one with a bullet.