Peter Viney's Blog

(Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Directed by Arthur Penn
Produced by Warren Beatty
Written by David Newman & Robert Benton
Director of Photography Burnett Guffey
Music by Charles Strouse

CAST

Warren Beatty – Clyde Barrow
Faye Dunaway – Bonnie Parker
Michael J. Pollard – C.W. Moss
Gene Hackman – Buck Barrow
Estelle Parsons- Blanche Barrow
Denver Pyle- Frank Harmer
Dub Taylor – Moss, C.W’s father
Evans Evans – Velma Davis
Gene Wilder – Eugene Grizzard

The 60s films revisited series continues… 

I have never experienced such a powerful impact from any other film compared to my first viewing of Bonnie & Clyde. Nowadays the level of violence is the stuff of everyday TV. Not then.

I have to separate memory from subsequent writing here. I used my memory of the first time I saw it as the basis for an otherwise fictional scene in the Dart Travis novel Music To Watch Girls By. I researched the mundane details of that summer of 1967 over many hours in Bournemouth Library with microfiche copies of the local paper. What was on in cinemas, prices, restaurant menus.  In a resort, the same epics ran all summer because of the high turnover of tourists. Dr Zhivago was running on and off locally for three years, including the entire summer of 1967 at the biggest cinema.  I saw it several times over three years. You did, in those days as a location for a date. I was working on limelights at the Winter Gardens that summer.  The UK release was 8th September 1967, a Friday. A group of the backing musicians from the show went to whatever film was new on the Friday afternoon, usually just the one new film in a town with seven or eight cinemas, and I tagged along. I remember meeting up, no lobby cards on view, just the title. None of us had seen a review. I had thought for years we may have seen a sneak preview earlier than the release date. I borrowed our real chat outside for the novel … was it going to be like Rob Roy or if we were unlucky, Greyfriars Bobby. We were sure it would be Scottish, possibly gritty social realism on the Clyde River with a girl called Bonnie, or maybe just “a bonny lass.” You can see why it was such a shock.

The story was David Newman and Robert Benton. They had read about Bonnie and Clyde, and did a screenplay without having a market for it. They submitted it to Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard … heavy arts directors. Truffaut showed the script to Warren Beatty, who read it and bought the option. Beatty then hunted around for a director, starting with William Wyler, Karel Reisz, John Schlesinger and Sydney Pollack and Arthur Penn was about the twelfth he approached. He says he kept trying to persuade Penn. Faye Dunaway recalls the cast sitting in the car for long periods during filming while Beatty and Penn discussed (argued) the next sequence. Beatty was the hands-on producer, and as Dunaway points out, one of the very first Actor-Producers.

I had never heard of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, though American audiences probably had. It’s worth comparing it to THE HIGHWAYMEN (LINKED) a 2019 Netflix movie (Kevin Costner & Woody Harrelson) which tells the story from the point of view of the hunters, “The Legends Who Took Down Bonnie & Clyde” according to the adverts.

The Robin Hood story works well in Depression America … the capitalists were known as Robber Barons. Banks were foreclosing on farmers because of the depression, so the outlaw, like the guerrilla, could ‘move amongst the people like a fish swims in the sea’ (Mao Zedong). Their popularity was attested by the 20,000 crowd at the real Bonnie Parker’s funeral. The Bonnie and Clyde story leads one of the main ‘criminal’ themes. The Wild West outlaw (Billy The Kid) morphed via Jesse James into Butch Cassidy, Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger and finally Bonnie and Clyde. Of course they were a couple, and that was the difference. They’re in love. They rob banks. The alternative clever heist theme was emerging alongside … The Italian Job, The Thomas Crowne Affair (the strength of this one was they tended NOT to kill people). Then the cinematic world developed its preference for Mob movies.

I used to have a sepia-tinted poster of this photo on the wall

The stills look better in black and white. One of Penn’s main aims was to capture the feel and harshness of the era and black and white photography, while filming in colour.

We had agreed in advance that there would be no ‘slick’ Hollywood photography, as such, in the picture‚ so we used no fill light at all in any of the sequences … No attempt was made to glamorize any of the people with soft, diffused lighting. Even the female lead, Faye Dunaway, was shot with no diffusion whatsoever. She wore very little makeup, but she was not too hard to photograph because she has a good face.  
Burnett Guffey, Director of Photography

In the blu-ray extra interviews, Arthur Penn says that Guffey was an old school classic Hollywood cinematographer, and that a lot of the shots were against his stndard ‘rules.’ Camera operators are expert cloud watchers, and Penn cites the scene where Bonnie runs off into a cornfield, and the dark shadows of clouds play across it. Classic cinematography would be to have waited for even light for continuity. Guffey won an Oscar.

They were obsessive about filming in the actual locations as far as possible, even the actual banks that were robbed:

The Bonnie and Clyde unit spent 10 weeks in northeast Texas filming in a series of small towns near Dallas — Rowlett, Maypearl, Venus, Ponder, Pilot Point, Garland, among many others — which had once been visited by Clyde Barrow and members of his gang for their assorted raids on banks, grocery stores and gasoline stations. In every case the small communities had remained almost unchanged since the Clyde Barrow days in the early 1930s. With the company as it “toured” the succession of small crossroads went a retinue of some 20 period cars, 1930-1934 models of Stearns-Knights, Hupmobiles, Star Durants, Jewetts as well as durable Fords, Chevies and Dodges. These were acquired on the location site for several hundred dollars, refurbished with tuned-up motors and after their “acting chores” were completed in the movie — Clyde Barrow stole more than 50 different vehicles during his 3.5 years of raiding — were sold at a profit to vintage vehicle fanciers. 
Herbert A Lightman, American Cinematographer

The exception was the last scene, which was shot back in California. They set the real location, Louisiana, with a shot of a sign, ‘Arcadia Louisiana’ carefully placed.

Bonnie & Clyde …

The opening credits sequence of stills references Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, a photo-essay on the American South in the 1930s depression. This was based on reality – the real Bonnie & Clyde were the original Selfie generation, and they  took photos of themselves. The police found several undeveloped rolls of films in a deserted hideout and published them. I’m not sure if they opening stills are Walker Evans shots, original Bonnie Parker shots or a mix. It looks like they got Warren Beatty in there.

The real Bonnie Parker

Recreating the pose, Faye Dunaway

Then we got another shock … the film opens with Faye Dunaway naked and alone in a room. She lies on the bed beating the bars in sheer frustration. Ooh! we thought, it’s going to be one of THOSE films. Faye Dunaway had auditioned for Arthur Penn’s previous movie, The Chase. She didn’t get the part, but he kept her in mind. It was important to have a lead actress who was not a well-known face. Warren Beatty was known from The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, and Mickey One (also with Arthur Penn, in 1965) and but he was not a face I could have put a name to at that point.

It goes on … this was Gene Wilder’s first film. Like Gene Hackman, he’d been on stage in New York. Beatty had tried for most of the Hollywood actress elite, including Jane Fonda and Ann-Margret. Arthur Penn wanted fresh faces, because fresh faces add to our sense of reality.

Sex

Let’s do the sub-plot first. After the naked scene, the first meeting is very sexy, with Bonnie sashaying along the street, caressing a coke bottle neck with her lips, then lovingly fingering Clyde’s gun barrel. After the first robbery she crawls all over him in the car, horny as can be. Clyde escape her embraces, falling out of the car to do so and declares Slow down! I  ain’t much of a lover boy …

Love over the Coca-cola

The blu-ray extras interviews were a surprise. Newman and Benton had originally written it with Clyde as homosexual / bisexual with a threesome with their getaway driver. Everyone seems to have realized pretty fast that wasn’t going to play with Warner Bros in 1967. They had a reason … they wanted tangible magnetism between Clyde and Bonnie, but they also wanted the magnets to hold a quivering distance rather than snap together. The solution? To make Clyde impotent. (My knowledge of screenwriting suggests that they had that alternative in their minds from very early on, but had preferred the homosexuality theme). There’s added humour in the impotence theme in retrospect, given Warren Beatty’s later reputation  as a stud (You’re so vain … I bet you think this song is about you … as Carly Simon sang.)

So we have a sub plot where Bonnie yearns for Clyde, but Clyde has extra motivation for recruiting new gang members, to avoid the terror of being alone with her when his erectile dysfunction (a phrase I don’t think we knew in 1967) would be revealed. There’s a scene where Clyde is snoring and Bonnie moves up really close to see if he’ll wake … and we realize C.W. Moss (Michael Pollard) is asleep on the sofa. Then once she gives up, the still snoring Clyde opens his eyes. He was not asleep.

When they have added brother Buck and his wife Blanche to the gang, and Bonnie manages to get them out of the cabin at last, Clyde thinks he’s going to be capable … but fails again. We get a going down scene with Bonnie though not even as far as his navel … as the extra interviews say, they didn’t expect to get away with it, but either Warner executives didn’t notice or didn’t get the implication – though this seems most unlikely for a movie mogul in any era.

They finally consummate in a field at C.W. Moss’s dad’s place right at the end. We are used to Hollywood using waves on a beach to indicate intercourse, but here it’s two sheets of newspapers being blown across the field, whirling and intertwining. Sex and death … which is why the final shoot out scene is described as orgiastic.

The story

The power of the film is the way it shifts ground, gradually from comedy to drama to extreme violence.

Five minutes in, and it seems like a rather sexy Rom-Com. Both actors proving adept at comedy. Bonnie sees Clyde about to steal her mom’s car, and confronts him: Hey, boy … what ya doin’ with my Momma’s car? They walk into town where Clyde guesses she’s a waitress and announces that he was in prison for armed robbery. He proves he can do it … no violence and off they go to the banjo theme of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the car swerving all over the road as Bonnie virtually tries to rape Clyde at the wheel. It’s near Keystone Cops.

They switch cars after a meal in a diner, and hole up in an abandoned farm house. Bonnie wakes to discover Clyde has slept outside. He teaches her to shoot a gun, then an old farmer walks round the corner. He retreats, hands up, and we see the classic Grapes of Wrath car laden with kids and mattresses. It was his farm, and we see the bank sign.

Used to be my place, but it’s not anymore. The bank took it …

Bonnie grins, We rob banks … (a boast … they haven’t yet). They give the farmer the gun to shoot out the windows, then his black farmhand, Davis, lopes over and takes a shot too. I noticed how firmly and easily Clyde shakes hands with Davis … for the Deep south, this was deliberate. This is a key scene establishing them as Robin Hood and Maid Marion. Woody Guthrie sums it up in Pretty Boy Floyd (NOT used in the film)

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
Woody Guthrie, Pretty Boy Floyd

The Migrant camp. C.W. Moss leaves the car to ask for water

It’s reflected later in the film, when both have been shot, covered in blood in the back of the car, C.W. Moss driving. They encounter a migrant camp … all the cars loaded for the trip to California … Okies and Arkies. The migrants gather round, give them water. A woman gives them a can of soup. These people are on their side.

Violence first appears when Clyde robs a grocery store and is loading bags when another grocer attacks him from behind with a meat cleaver … Clyde pistol-whips him, and cannot understand why he was attacked so violently. We see the grocer, badly beaten in hospital, identifying Clyde.

A new recruit: C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard)

They meet C.W. Moss at a gas station (the late Michael J. Pollard). Pollard’s casting was in place of the huge tall hunk in the original screenplay … casting genius. He joins them.

The biggest shock comes next. It’s a bank robbery. C.W. Moss decides not to wait in the street but parallel park the car, then gets hemmed in. The duo run out and it’s high comedy as C.W. tries to bump the car out of the space. Everyone’s running everywhere. the bank manager leaps on the car’s running board … and Clyde shoots him in the face, blood explodes over the window. I still recall the shock of seeing that the first time. Clyde is equally shocked, trying to justify it.

The next shift dramatically is meeting up with brother Buck (Gene Hackman), a whooping back slapping arm-punching Good Ol’ Boy. He asks Clyde if Bonnie’s as hot as she looks and Clyde says ‘Better.’ Not that he knows.

Buck (Gene Hackman) and Clyde (Warren Beatty): brothers and buddies

Blanche (Estelle Parsons) and Bonnie (Faye Dunaway)

Trouble is Blanche. She’s dumb, a preacher’s daughter, incredibly irritating. A total pain the arse. Bonnie hates her. She hates Bonnie. Blanche is hilarious and Estelle Parsons got the film’s only acting Academy award (Best Supporting actress) for her portrayal … creation, rather.

Bonnie (Faye Dunaway), C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) and Blanche Barrow (Estelle Parsons). Both got Best Supporting Actor / Actress nominations. Both deserved to win, but only Estelle did.

The instant dislike rang bells for me. A friend and I decided to go on a week’s holiday in Cornwall with our girlfriends. Trouble was, the girls had never met each other and took an instant dislike to each other too. To compound it, I had only a provisional licence, so my friend had to sit in the front of the car with me. I could feel Clyde’s embarrassment.

We now have the gang of five. On their first mass police attack, and their escape is jeopardized by Blanche running up and down screaming

Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle)

Meet Frank Hamer. He’s a Texas Ranger and a bounty hunter following them. TYhey capture him, and take a series of humiliating photos of him with them to send tothe press. He spits in Bonnie’s face after she kisses him for the photo, and Clyde explodes into violence again. But they don’t kill him, just set him off handcuffed in a boat.

We rob banks: Buck (Gene Hackman), Clyde (Warren Beatty), Bonnie (Faye Dunaway)

On a bank robbery, Clyde asks a farmer if the money he’s holding is his or the bank’s. Mine, he replies. Keep it. Later interviewed the farmer says:

They did right by me and I’m gonna bring a mess of flowers to their funeral.

The relationship is not improved when Blanche demands a separate share of the takings.

Sharing out the proceeds

We are into portents. Just as we’re getting serious, with violence and bickering, we have a further high comedy scene. They steal a car belonging to Eugene (Gene Wilder) and his girlfriend Velma. Eugene gives chase in her car … and the gang decide to kidnap them instead. They all become friendly … Eugene complains that he’s been given the wrong burger … then reveals he’s an undertaker. Bonnie has the car stopped, and they are left on the roadside. Another portent.

Kidnapped! Eugene (Gene Wilder) and Velma (Evans Evans)

She’s getting depressed and wants to see her elderly mother. They set up a family meeting, everyone comes out to meet them in a sand quarry, C.W., like a meerkat, on top of a hill with a rifle as protection and look out. They’re stressing again that the ordinary people see nothing wrong with them. Bonnie’s mum, like both farmers speaks incredibly slowly and measured.

Buck is shot, Blanche is blinded

The next raid has them surrounded in a field. Buck is shot in the head, Blanche is blinded. C.W. helps the wounded Bonnie and Clyde escape, and drives them (via the migrant camp) to his dad’s place in Louisiana … hundreds of miles. Frank Hamer tricks the blinded Blanche in prison into revealing C.W. Moss’s name.

C.W. Moss’s dad is furious at the tattoo Bonnie has persuaded his son to get. (The father is listed as Ivan Moss on IMDB, but Bonnie and Clyde refer to him as Malcolm … a name that rings oddly in 1930s Louisiana!) He meets Frank Hamer and they set up the final ambush, in exchange for a two year sentence for C.W.  Mr Moss pretends to be mending a flat tyre, gets Bonnie and Clyde to stop … a sudden flight of birds takes their attention (ascending to heaven?) then the shoot out. We have had over fifty years since of people being riddled with bullets in slow motion. This was new. You never say “the first” in film, because someone will prove you wrong, but at the time it felt completely new.

Incredible.

In all these 60s retrospectives, Bonnie and Clyde and If …. were the two I’d single out for my greatest ever movies top ten. Like If …. my opinion hasn’t changed with this viewing.

SOUNDTRACK

It’s by Charles Strouse. I recall very little of it, but the recurring bluegrass theme is Foggy Mountain Breakdown by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. The recording dated back to 1949. Following the film, Flatt & Scruggs re-recorded it and both versions charted, being listed jointly at US #55. It’s used in the rural car chase sequences, and it was called for in Newman and Benton’s original script.

Incidentally, Georgie Fame’s Ballad of Bonnie & Clyde was a response to the film, and several months AFTER the film.

BLU RAY

I treated myself to the 40th Anniversary Blu-Ray for this rewatching (I had the DVD). Deleted scenes (you can see why they were deleted), revealing interviews with the cast, plus a documentary on the real Bonnie and Clyde (a pretty different story).

Nothing screamed out as a revelation in quality, but the outdoor scenes shone. A lot was filmed in the cars, and back projection was used (rather than as today a low-loader) and the in car scenes don’t shine out like the outdoor stuff.

1968 REACTION

It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoughly Modern Millie.
Bosley Crowther, NewYork Times, 1968

A milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance … It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life.
Roger Ebert 1968

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)