Bonnie Parker is lolling around in bed, naked, alone and suffocating with ennui. She’s in a small Texas town during the depression working as a waitress — if you can call it work. It’s a dead-end job in a dead-end life and pretty as she is, Bonnie knows her prospects of getting out are closer to none than slim. Maybe a man will come along. Sure a lot already have but maybe the right one. Someone with money and prospects. Someone who’ll treat her right. Ahh but the wait could be long and there are no guarantees it will pan out.
But then out the window she sees a handsome young man who is apparently looking to steal her mama’s car. It’s not so much the idea that there’s a thief outside that gets her attention as it is that there’s an interesting fella whose got a slick patter and an intriguing manner. She practically falls all over herself simultaneously getting dressed and dashing outside to meet this alluring stranger.
Thus begins the story of Bonnie and Clyde, at least is it is told in the 1967 film directed by Arthur Penn. A beautiful young woman, so desperate for a chance at a new life, for a chance at excitement for a chance at anything beyond the drudgery she now lives, spontaneously abandons her life on a whim.
It all makes sense though. Bonnie is not the first woman to hitch her wagon to passing stranger. When there’s no bird in the hand that one in the bush is mighty tempting.
The kicker is that Bonnie finds not only excitement but fame beyond what she’d ever imagined — if she’d ever imagined having any sort of fame at all. There is money too and adventure. But there are is also danger and ultimately death. You just never know what you’re going to get when you take a big chance.
And by the way, Bonnie and Clyde —as they proudly boast — rob banks and stores and they’re not shy about shooting people — usually cops — in the process. They become famous for it.
I first saw Bonnie and Clyde during its initial release when I was thirteen-years old. I’d never seen the likes of it. But it wasn’t so much what I saw as what I felt that was different. I’d never really felt a movie before. Bonnie and Clyde was a visceral movie-going experience. Is.
There is an intimacy to it rare in films with shoot-outs and car chases. You feel like you’re physically close to the title characters, part of the gang able to understand their actions and motivations. You almost sympathize with them, certainly you root them on. Part of it is that so much of the film takes place in cars, close quarters. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were young, beautiful people and there is a sensuality that comes from the many close-ups of the two. You’re not just drawn into their world but into their relationship.
But that relationship is not the usual fare of pictures. For there is the uncinematic fact of Clyde’s impotence. It seems so jolting, such a harsh choice to inflict on this couple. His self-proclaimed disinterest in being “a lover boy” runs counter to the viral heroes that populate most movies. It was strange territory to me as teenager, mystifying but not off-putting. This “problem” made the character of Clyde Barrow more human, more relatable. For Bonnie it is vexing and frustrating to the point that it angers her — she even weaponizes it against him.
Bonnie and Clyde are joined by others. First C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) and then brother Buck Barrow (Gene Hackman) and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons). The car becomes impossibly crowded and in one scene when they pick up two people (Gene Wilder and Evans Evans) there are seven jam packed into an automobile of pure chaotic claustrophobia and laughs. The film takes us on a dizzying ride alternating between the crowded and the wide open spaces. Going from laughter to death. Life on the run can be like that.
Blanche’s hysteria coupled with her preacher’s daughter ordinariness is anathema to Bonnie. This she did not sign up for. What exactly she expects, what exactly she wants what exactly she can reasonably hope for as a wanted bank robber is unclear. But it isn’t to be around some squealing woman who disdains her. She likely has some ambivalence toward Buck who is every bit a hick.
Sadness permeates the film. Even while enjoying watching the robbers fleeing from inept cops to the tune of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, we have the definite sense that this can’t/won’t last. A bank customer is interviewed after a Barrow gang robbery in which Clyde had insisted that he keep his money, they only want the bank’s. Naturally he extolls the thieves, then predicts their demise. He doesn’t want them dead or caught, he just sees it as inevitable. When finally the gang meets with Bonnie’s family, it is her aging Ma that rejects any notion of a future for them all together. She sadly and laconically notes the reality of their life as hunted criminals. It is part of a surreal scene that adds to the growing sense that the end is near for our joy riders.
For me the film's most powerful scene is after a bank robbery in which their next recruit, C.W. has stupidly parked the getaway car. The fleeing couple initially can't find the car then CW has trouble maneuvering out of his cramped parking space. As a result a bank employee (inexplicably) gets on their running board. Clyde shoots him in the face. The robbers escape the town and we next find them in movie theater watching Gold Diggers of 1933. Clyde is livid, berating their wheelman for his stupidity. CW is in tears. Bonnie shushes them only wanting to watch the picture. Clyde had to kill a man. CW is devastated by his mistake. Bonnie wants them to shut the hell up. On the screen Ginger Rogers is leading a rendition of "We're in the Money." Wow.
The price of fame for Bonnie and Clyde was an early death. It is a reality as stark and real as mortality itself. Bonnie and Clyde affect two miraculous escapes from the law, though Buck is killed and Blanche captured in the latter one.
But they were never clever enough to make a career of evading the law. These are not intelligent criminals. They share with common crooks the sad fate that it will all end badly -- probably sooner rather than later. Bonnie and Clyde had seemed special, mostly because they were a bank robbing couple. But they weren’t. The film is a fictionalized version of the real couple's adventures but it is very real in showing the ultimate cost of life of crime.
Cinematically they die in spectacular fashion, riddled with bullets in an almost operatic ending. There is a romance to it. Their deaths are quick and so excessively executed as to be pitied. They go out as anti-heroes.
Shortly before meeting their fate Clyde was finally able to function in bed — though he needed reassurances from Bonnie that his performance was worthy of her. It was a consolation prize to two wasted lives as were their short-lived glory and the damn good bit of fun they had before reality caught up to them. Bonnie got out of that sad, dusty town. Be careful what you wish for.
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