Wednesday, October 09, 2019

*A Tale From American Popular Folklore- “Bonnie And Clyde”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of a movie trailer for Bonnie and Clyde

DVD Review

Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, MGM, 1967


In an earlier period of America cultural iconology, at least from the time of Jesse James and his fellows to the 1930s, the bank robber, deservedly or not, had pretty good press in the popular imagination. That time is well past, and certainly well past and not coming back since the dawn of the age of the ATM. The hook has always been a variation of the poor getting back at the rich through some populist agent. And if he or she threw a few dollars on the ground for the local populace that act became the stuff of legends. The reality behind those legends was generally something different; usually just stone-cold killers and their henchmen making off with the dough so they did not have to work. Hardly the program for progressive societal emancipation.

But enough of that “high sociology”. After all this is a review of a commercial film, “Bonnie and Clyde”, not a critique of the lumpen criminal lifestyle as it impinges on the working poor from which that element usually comes. I mentioned the hook of the banks as symbols of the rich against the poor (a rather timely subject these days). During the Great Depression of the 1930s that fact was even truer as farmers, small businessmen, and others were foreclosed at will (the bank's will). Moreover, and this might “speak” to a critique of the lumpen lifestyle, the banks then, especially out in the Great Plains small towns where Bonnie and Clyde operated were easy targets for slick operators with fast cars and good aim.

And it is at this level that this film shines. Rather than some moralistic sermon about the virtues of work and the little white house with the picket fence this film takes the somewhat comic road and catalogs the trials and tribulations of being bank robbers on the way to becoming a legend, and what happens when you get in the cross-hairs of the police. There are plenty of good scenes that portray this from day one of Bonnie and Clyde's new joint career path (Clyde was a recidivist career criminal, Bonnie a wanderlust waitress looking for some action), including a funny scene of a bank with no dough. But, although this saga is played for “camp” a little moral does seep in at the end. The last scene (I will not divulge it here) is guaranteed to make one ponder the virtues of the nine-to-five grind and that little white house.

No, I have not forgotten the romance end of this odd variation of the boy meets girl theme that dominates many commercial films. I was just saving it for the end. The tensions, attractions, ambitions, and frustrations between Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway visually add greatly to this film. Especially seeing a young Faye Dunaway going through her paces being, well, fetching. She was made for the camera. This brings up my last point. I have pointed out in other commentaries my own short-lived, small-time, unsuccessful teenage “romance” with the criminal life. If Faye Dunaway had been around my neighborhood and wanted to a little free-lance crime, or whatever, I might have pursued that career path more fully, and gladly. And the hell with the little white house with the picket fence.

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