Bonnie and Clyde is one of (at least) two groundbreaking movies to come out in 1967; the other was The Graduate. The fact that both of them were nominated for Best Picture is a testament to the foresight of the members of the Academy. That both of them lost to In the Heat of the Night is an indication that the total number of Academy members with foresight was too small indeed that year. Perhaps it was the violence, so unexpected in a mainstream film then, that put off the voters, or maybe it was the frequent discussion of sexual matters that led them to choose a "safer" film to be awarded Best Picture. Regardless of the reason, anyone looking at the list of nominees for that year would certainly pick either The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde; personally, I'm leaning toward Bonnie and Clyde because of its brilliant script by David Newman and Robert Benton and the great performances by most of the cast and its innovative style.
The film is the story of two of the most notorious bank robbers of the 1930s, a couple whose fame spread way beyond Texas and Missouri and Oklahoma, the states where they committed most of their crimes. People everywhere seem to have heard of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and the members of their gang. Obviously, the film version romanticizes these outlaws, and it makes them more attractive than their real-life counterparts in multiple ways. There are several photos of the two of them, and I can assure you that they don't look anything like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.
At first, the two of them are really rather inept at robbing banks. The first bank they try to rob, for example, failed three weeks earlier and has no money. Bonnie has a big laugh about that. Clyde almost gets killed by a butcher when he tries to rob a grocery store, and even after they add C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) to the gang to serve as the getaway driver, he almost gets them caught by parallel parking the car and then not being able to get it out of the space quickly enough. After the addition of Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman) to the gang, they become more successful at robbing banks if not at acquiring huge sums of money. The legend begins to grow very quickly, and rumors of the Barrow gang spread throughout the country.
In its depictions of the newspaper accounts of Bonnie and Clyde, the film addresses the issue of celebrity and how enticing it can be and how debilitating as well. Bonnie and Clyde love seeing their names in the paper; Bonnie even pens a poem about their exploits that gets published. However, when the information is incorrect, such as when a robbery is attributed to them by mistake, Clyde can get furious. He seems to want to control the image of the two of them, but it has quickly gotten out of hand. C.W. notes that even Buck gets mentioned in the newspapers at times, but he is never identified. That may be good in terms of what eventually happens to the rest of the gang, but he undoubtedly feels a bit left out of the notoriety. He, like Clyde and Bonnie, becomes more than a little distracted by what others are saying about them.
The film also indulges in a bit of revenge fantasy. Bonnie and Clyde begin robbing banks as a way to get back at the banks that began taking over houses and forcing people to leave their homes during the Great Depression. Given the increasing wealth gap at the time of the film’s release in 1967, contemporaneous audiences must have felt that aspect of the film to be quite relevant. The shots of the run-down towns the gang travels through evoke some strong imagery of the time period, and the film shows some beautiful sequences of driving along country road and through wheatfields and cornfields. The cinematography was justly recognized by the Academy; it’s a beautiful film even when we’re seeing just how depressing the times were.
This movie is also quite obsessed with penises. Well, really, it's just obsessed with one penis, the one belonging to Clyde. I don't know if the real Clyde Barrow was impotent, but Beatty plays him here as a man who wants to have sex but cannot seem to attain an erection. As he keeps telling Bonnie, he's "not much of a lover boy." Dunaway portrays Bonnie as perpetually frustrated by Clyde's inability to consummate their relationship. Her Bonnie becomes obsessed with his penis or anything that is meant to resemble or substitute for it. When they first meet, he shows her his gun, surreptitiously, of course, and she strokes the pistol's barrel as if she were going to deflower Clyde on the spot. She tries oral sex on Clyde, but that fails to arouse him. Later in the film, when she is posing for pictures, she takes Clyde's cigar from his mouth and puts it into her own. If he can't be a "real" man, I suppose, she can be—at least, in the photograph. Of course, she can only take on the trappings of masculinity. She can carry a gun of her own (after Clyde shows her how to shoot), and she can play with his cigar, but he isn't going to satisfy her sexually. It's all very Freudian stuff, isn't it, all of this penis envy and castration anxiety? By the way, it must have been fun for Beatty, such a notorious womanizer, to play someone who is unable to satisfy a woman.
All of the five lead performers were nominated for Oscars. The most egregious loss was Dunaway's defeat by Katherine Hepburn in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Hepburn has little to do in her film other than look lovingly at Spencer Tracy’s character. Dunaway and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate, on the other hand, give unique and intriguing takes on their roles, and either one would have been a more worthy recipient. Beatty, as beautiful and charming as he is here, isn’t quite as good as Dunaway. We don’t learn much about his underlying motivations except for his obvious familial loyalty to his brother. He served as both actor and producer on Bonnie and Clyde and would in later years add director and writer to his resume. I think he’s better in Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait, for example, than he is here.
Hackman as Buck and Pollard as C.W. are both good here, and they competed against each other for Best Supporting Actor. I would give the edge to Pollard because he has a more intriguing character arc. He gets to change and become stronger as the plot progresses. Hackman, by comparison, doesn’t have as much to do other than be the faithful, supportive brother and husband. Oddly enough, Estelle Parsons was the only member of the cast to win an Oscar; hers was for Best Supporting Actress. However, I find hers to be the weakest performance of the five main actors. As Buck’s wife, she’s prone to screaming and complaining, neither of which endear her to an audience.
The scene in the film that has naturally and justifiably gotten the most attention is the one where Bonnie and Clyde are tricked by Mr. Moss, C.W.’s father (Dub Taylor), into stopping by the side of a road. There they are surrounded by police, who fire upon the robbers without mercy. It's pretty horrific to watch, frankly, as their bodies writhe from the bullets shattering them. And it seems to go on and on and on even though it only lasts about twenty seconds. The film goes into slow motion at one point, and I suspect many people think that sequence, in particular, glorifies the depiction of violence. A film about bank robbers, especially famous ones, has to include the violence for which they were known. It is a bloody film, certainly, but the context calls for it. When we see someone get shot, it's more realistic to see the blood that comes from such a wound. Later films would, unsurprisingly, become even more graphic and filled with violence, but Bonnie and Clyde paved the way for those more realistic depictions that followed.
Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons) and Best Cinematography
Other Oscar Nominations:
Best Picture, Best Director (Arthur Penn), Best Actor (Warren Beatty), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway),
Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard), Best Story and
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, and Best Costume Design
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