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= 4 stars

Starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman
Directed By Arthur Penn

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I first saw Bonnie and Clyde in high-school film class. I don’t know if I completely understood its sexual themes but I did remember its uncompromising violence. I hadn’t seen the film again until recently, more than a decade later.

Most obviously Bonnie and Clyde concerns the recklessness of youth. The scene is depression-era American west. Clyde (Warren Beatty) thinks he’s above the law and is free to do anything he wants. Unfortunately, the only thing he can think to do is rob banks. Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) runs away from home, thinking her love for Clyde will be the answer to everything. Due to their recklessness they start on an inevitable path towards destruction: a bank-robbing crime spree, toting guns, stealing cars and dishing out rebellious attitude. Sounds like a familiar tale (Rebel Without a Cause) but what’s different this time out is the way it’s told (largely visually) through extreme, sudden violence during pivotal moments.

Some condemned the film for glorifying violence and making the criminal duo too sympathetic. I feel the only sympathetic thing they do is early on, allowing a sharecropper who lost his farm to the bank a few shots of target practice. Practically everything they do from then on out is deplorable, decadent, and stupid. Most abhorrent is dragging Clyde’s brother and wife down to their level of problems. But the in-laws’ audacity provides much of the film’s humor, as they do reckless things that jeopardize the whole operation. Despite the humor during high points of their crime spree, a shadow hangs over everything as we know it will eventually end badly. The shock is how sudden, brutal, and final the end feels when it occurs.

Clyde also has an impotence problem. Obviously, this film takes place well before Viagra. It’s implied this might be a driving force behind his obsessive bank-robbing and gunplay. So when he brings a young boy and his brother into his life on the lam, is he perhaps symbolically having sex with both of them? Judging from Bonnie’s jealousy and distaste at having to share Clyde’s attention, maybe so.

I feel this film represents the inevitable death of youthful idealism. It’s a subconscious mood, never explicitly stated, but the fact is, neither Bonnie nor Clyde want to grow up. Clyde wants to continue many a boy’s fantasy of playing cops and robbers. Bonnie is insistent the man she loves is worth sticking with through no matter what. They seem naively unable to see their tragic end fast approaching. In some ways, this film is representative of the sixties from whence it came, when reckless youth (both the people in office and the hippies) were taking the nation in childish, idealistic directions, living in the now, not caring much for the consequences and dragging a lot of innocent people with them. Maybe the final images feel so brutal because they remind us of that decade’s violent protests and assassinations, and how a nation lost its innocence and faced an uncertain, more cynical future.

IMDB: Bonnie and Clyde
Wikipedia: Bonnie And Clyde
Rotten Tomatoes: Bonnie And Clyde 94%

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