Bonnie and Clyde movie review (1967) | Roger Ebert (2024)

There is a moment in "Bonnie and Clyde" when Bonnie,frightened and angry, runs away from Clyde through a field of wheat, and as hepursues her, a cloud sweeps across the field and shadows them. Seen in a high,wide-angle shot, it is one of those moments of serendipity given to few movies.Today the cloud could be generated by computers; on the day the scene wasfilmed in Texas, it was a perfectly timed accident of nature.

The cloud carries foreboding; Bonnie and Clyde are doomed, anduneasily realize it. Not long after that scene, Bonnie has a final reunion withher mother. By then Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (WarrenBeatty) are famous outlaws, celebrated in the press as populist bank robbers inan America gripped by the Depression. Bonnie speaks wistfully of marrying Clydeand moving in next door to her mother. "You live within a mile of me,honey, and you'll be dead,” her mother flatly pronounces.

They would indeed die, in a hail of bullets that permanentlychanged the way the movies depicted violence. But their lives provided atemplate that would be used time and again in later films; as the ads put it,"They're young ... they're in love ... and they kill people.” From"Bonnie and Clyde" descended "Badlands," "Days of Heaven,""Thelma and Louise," "Drugstore Cowboy," "Natural Born Killers" and countless other movies in which ordinary people weretransformed by sudden violence into legend.

"Bonnie and Clyde," made in 1967, was called "thefirst modern American film” by critic Patrick Goldstein, in an essay on its30th anniversary. Certainly it felt like that at the time. The movie openedlike a slap in the face. American filmgoers had never seen anything like it. Intone and freedom it descended from the French new wave, particularly FrancoisTruffaut's own film about doomed lovers, "Jules and Jim.” Indeed, it wasTruffaut who first embraced the original screenplay by David Newman and RobertBenton, and called it to the attention of Warren Beatty, who was determined toproduce it.

The legend of the film's production has become almost as famousas its heroes. Stories are told about how Beatty knelt at the feet of studioboss Jack Warner, begging for the right to make the film. How Warner saw theoriginal cut and hated it. How the movie premiered at the Montreal filmfestival, and was roasted by Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. How WarnerBros. determined to dump it in a chain of Texas drive-ins, and how Beattyimplored the studio to give it a chance.

How it opened and quickly closed in the autumn of 1967, pannedby the critics, receiving only one ecstatic opening-day newspaper review.(Modesty be damned: It was my own, calling it "a milestone in the historyof American movies, a work of truth and brilliance" and predicting"years from now it is quite possible that 'Bonnie and Clyde' will be seenas the definitive film of the 1960s.")

The movie closed, but would not go away. The soundtrack,bluegrass by Flatt and Scruggs, went to the top of the charts. Theodora VanRunkle's berets and maxiskirts for Dunaway started a global fashion craze.Newsweek critic Joseph Morgenstern famously wrote that his original negativereview had been mistaken. The movie reopened, went on to become one of WarnerBros.' biggest hits and won 10 nominations (with Oscars for supporting actressEstelle Parsons and cinematographer Burnett Guffey).

But that is only the success story. More important was theimpact the film had on the American movie industry. Beatty's willingness toplay a violent character with sexual dysfunction was unusual for a traditional1960s leading man. In a famous Esquire profile by Rex Reed, which appeared asthe movie was opening, he was dismissed as a has-been pretty boy. "Bonnieand Clyde" put him permanently on the Hollywood map.

Beatty and director Arthur Penn cast the movie mostly withunknown stage actors--so successfully that all the major players (Dunaway,Parsons, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Wilder) became stars on thebasis of this film. Behind the camera, the movie launched the careers not onlyof Van Runkle, but also of editor Dede Allen (a New Yorker breaking into aclosed shop) and production designer Dean Tavoularis, who went on to work onFrancis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now." And the cinematography of Guffey launched a whole new wave of itsown, of films shot and edited in the more impressionistic French style.

Arthur Penn came fresh to the project after a resounding failure("Mickey One," a self-conscious but intriguing art film) also madewith Beatty. His later credits included "Night Moves," "Alice's Restaurant" and "Little Big Man." Co-writer Robert Benton becamean important director ("Kramer vs. Kramer," "Places in the Heart"). It's as if that one film sent all those careers cascading down tothe present day.

It was a film in which all of the unlikely pieces were assembledat the right time. And more than anything else, it was a masterpiece of tone,in which the actors and filmmakers were all in sync as they moved the materialback and forth between comedy and tragedy.

The opening scenes are lighthearted, starting with Clyde'sbravado after Bonnie catches him trying to steal her mother's car. She sensesin him, instantly, the means of her escape from a boring west Texas town. Whathe essentially supplies--for her, for the hero-worshipping gang member C.W.Moss (Pollard) and for the hungry newspaper readers -- is the possibility ofglamour in lives of drab poverty. "We're the Barrow Gang," Clydesays, introducing them at the beginning of a bank robbery so they'll be sure toget credit. And one of the movie's great moments comes as Clyde lends his gunto a dispossessed black sharecropper so he could shoot at a bank's foreclosuresign.

If Clyde offers glamour, Bonnie offers publicity. She writes"The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" and sends it to a newspaper, and sheposes for photos holding a machinegun and a cigar. Clyde's brother Buck(Hackman) is more level-headed, more concerned with bank jobs than newspaperheadlines. He comes attached to Blanche (Parsons), whose whiny complaints geton Bonnie's nerves (when agents surround one of their hideouts, she runsscreaming across the lawn, still holding the spatula she was using to cooksupper).

Penn directs the film as a series of set-pieces, which remain inthe memory, focused and clear. The Okie camp where homeless farmers, tractoredoff their lands by the banks, hunch over campfires. Bonnie's sad, overcast,foggy family reunion. The bank robbery that goes all wrong when C.W. stupidlyparks the getaway car. The way laughter turns blindingly to violence, as when astickup ends with a meat cleaver and a sack of flour, or when a getaway endswith a bullet in a bank man's face. The run-in with a state trooper (DenverPyle) who is made to pose with Bonnie and Clyde, and then unwisely released.The scene where C.W., a gas station attendant, leaves his job and runs off withthe gang that's just robbed him. The scene where C.W.'s father effortlesslybrowbeats his wimpy son for getting a tattoo. And then the slow-motion balletof the final execution.

Today, the freshness of "Bonnie and Clyde" has beenabsorbed in countless other films, and it's hard to see how fresh and originalit felt in 1967 -- just as the impact of "Citizen Kane," in 1941, maynot be obvious to those raised in the shadow of its influence.

When I saw it, I had been a film critic for less than sixmonths, and it was the first masterpiece I had seen on the job. I felt anexhilaration beyond describing. I did not suspect how long it would be betweensuch experiences, but at least I learned that they were possible.