*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.

Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind

Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind      

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Adventures Of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, 1938

Some legends are all baloney, so much hot air. The legend of Robin Hood (who worked under many aliases a few of which have come down in history depending on what scam he was working out and which seem verifiable-Bob Sherwood, Robert Wood, John Hood, Jack Woodson) is the max daddy of one strain of the legend genre. The “rob from the rich, give to the poor” stuff which has had many progenies since his time coming through John of Gaunt to Jim Wiggins to Sam Portage down to Pretty Boy Floyd made famous by Woody Guthrie (and debunked by no less a “New West” authority than Larry McMurtry) to Pretty James Preston in the early 1960s. As usual, and the case of Pretty James Preston, comes to mind since he robbed banks and other places in broad daylight, near the hometown where I grew up, this is all hogwash. Oh, Pretty James might have left a fifty- cent tip at some diner (probably his dead ass way to impress some sullen waitress) or given his used clothing to Goodwill or the Salvation Army (both places where he was well known when he was down on his luck) but the lies that he paid rents for people who lived in the projects, a place where he grew up, brought hundreds gallons of milk for the kids at the elementary school he had gone to, or bought an automobile for the priests up at Sacred Heart are just that. Lies. A fairy tale made up by Scott Lewis a writer for the North Adamsville Ledger who knew Pretty James and essentially acted as a press agent for him.              

Let’s get back to the max daddy, this Robin Hood, or whatever his name was which considering this is all the stuff of legend probably is not his real name although a Sir Robert Woodson did own a lot of land and was some honcho after helping Richard II aka the Lion-Hearted take back his throne way back in the 12^th century around the time the legend got started. The Woodson tax rolls and home court records are still extant, and they show he taxed his peasant land-holders, his “employees” more heavily than other landowners in the area. Had more of these peasants on the rack for simple crimes than any other, more than a guy named Sir Guy Gilroy who was supposedly the local bad baron before Robert took over. Since we can date the legends from this time and this location it is not far-fetched to say no way that this guy was giving to the poor anything but cold porridge and steel. In short, a rather fitting forbear for Pretty James Preston.    

As everybody knows, or should know, legends become legends through repetition, usually oral but in the modern ages through print and eventually through film which is where we are today. This film review of Errol Flynn’s 1938 portrayal of this Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood is a classic modern case of puffing up this “good guy” legend for modern generations just as Woody Guthrie gussied up the murderous Pretty Boy Floyd back in the 1930s as well. Here is how the thing spirals out of control for yet another time.  

King Richard II of England, nominally a Christian, was seriously into leading crusades against the infidels, the Moslems, in the Middle East as much for the bounty as for the faith (sound familiar). On his way back from this trip he was taken prisoner by some geek king in Vienna, an enemy. That detention led his younger brother Prince John, played by Claude Rains last seen in this space walking arm and arm with Humphrey Bogart into the mist looking for a beautiful friendship after letting Victor Lazlo with wife Ilsa leave on the last plane to Lisbon to lead the anti-fascist struggle in Europe, to plot to take his shot at the empty throne. Naturally he needed allies, allies like Sir Guy Gilroy, played by Basil Rathbone last seen in this space smoking high-grade dope with his dear friend Doc Watson in the endless 1940s Sherlock Holmes film series, who were not going along for free. The needed money coming from the hides of every peasant free-holder, tradesmen or servant.    

Of course the money kept rolling in but as to be expected the masses took unkindly to this gouging. Including a free-booter, a border ruffian, a robber, who has come down to us as Robin Hood, played by Errol Flynn who has never before graced this publication. He and his gang played havoc with the roads around Sherwood Forest and gained a pretty penny from whoever passed by-there are no records however to show what he did, or did not do with the dough, other than later when he got his land grants and other rights from the king and gouged his peasants as savagely as Prince John and Sir Guy ever did. Made them take it too since he was a “liberator”

This Robin Hood though made a serious decision that would in the end pay off-go with Prince John and face the hangman or some such unpleasantries or wait on the possible return of King Richard II. He opted for the latter and essentially waged guerilla warfare against Johnny, his barons and their hangers-on.  Made Johnny scream bloody murder and put the swash-buckling blade to Sir Guy. Both events paved the way to getting Richard his throne back, paved the way for Robin Hood to become the richest and greediest landowner in England maybe Wales too. Of course, there is no church record of such a marriage but in the movie Robin weds and beds some ward of the king, Lady Marian, played by Olivia de Haviland also gracing these pages for the first time. That my friends is the stuff of legends and here is the hard part to take-the legend is so engrained that no matter what anybody does to refute the stuff it is in vain. Still Robin Hood’s reputation is all hooey.