Bonnie and Clyde (Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway), a couple during the Great Depression, go on a crime spree with the Barrow gang, consisting of Clyde’s brother (Gene Hackman) and his wife, and a gas station clerk, C. W. Moss, that they pick up.
The Great Depression setting is well realised, not so much in terms of sets but in character and tone. By talking on the banks that (in popular perception, anyway) with greed and speculation ruined the economy at the expense of the innocent every-man, they become folk heroes. They always treat the people right, whether in a bank robbery (giving a man’s money back) or staying in an abandoned fore-closed home (encouraging the former occupant to take shots at the bank sign). It could very easily be updated for modern times.
The film is also influenced by anti-Vietnam protests at the time. It is essentially a 1940s crime film remade with 1960s sensibilities (Gun Crazy, 1950, has an almost identical plot, minus the rest of the gang), but because of that feels entirely original. It’s in colour, for one, but it’s also shot in a more daring style, with longer takes, more extreme close-ups, the sex and violence are more intense and random. What is retained is the crime doesn’t pay message, although otherwise the film is very morally ambiguous. Audiences always used to have sympathy for the criminals, but here it’s much more explicit, and law enforcement are made to look bad even though they’re the ones being murdered. The period setting allows the film to get away with it.
The driving force behind this film was really Warren Beatty, who produced it as a star vehicle for himself. Usually this doesn’t turn out so well, but I thought he gave an interesting performance, cocky yet insecure, particularly about his sexual performance (the idea that he was homosexual was removed in the rewrite). I got the impression that the robberies and the murder (although the latter are normally only by necessity) were not only about money and social justice but also a sexual experience (Clyde’s first robbery in the film is to impress Bonnie). Beatty would have been great as the title character in an adaptation of The Great Gatsby (Robert Redford was still a good choice, as he had a similar role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a successor of Bonnie and Clyde).
Faye Dunaway, an unknown at the time, also holds her weight. She makes some very brave acting choices. The whole film is full of unusual choices, in shaky camera movement (this film pre-dates Steadicam, developed for Rocky). I didn’t feel too much for the central characters, but I did like the character of C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), comic and tragic at the same time, as is the whole movie.
Verdict: Quintessential.
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