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"This here's Miss Bonnie Parker. I'm Clyde Barrow.
We rob banks"-Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) "I ain't no lover
boy"- Beatty as Clyde Barrow to Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway)
***
He might not have been a "lover boy" but Warren Beatty
as Clyde Barrow sure is pretty to look at on screen. Playing
with his image as a pin-up, Beatty and the beautiful Faye
Dunaway pull off their roles as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie
Parker in Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" despite their
Hollywood looks. Penn has always been an adventurous filmmaker
and his work with Beatty in "Mickey One" paid off with a
solid, nuanced performance from Betty where others might
have let the actor get away with a less thoughtful interpretation
of the role. With "Bonnie and Clyde" Penn and Beatty (producer
on the project) demonstrate a keen awareness of the French
New Wave (originally director Francios Truffaut was approached
to direct and its rumored that Jean Luc-Goddard the infant
terrible of the New Wave movement was asked as well but
his changes were so radical that he was rejected as a director
for the film. Truffaut's most telling influence the elimination
of Clyde Barrow's bisexuality in favor of making him impotent
a choice that Penn also argued for when Beatty thought about
going back to the original script by David Newman and Robert
Benton) which influenced some of Penn's unusual visual choices
for the film. The first time we meet Bonnie Parker we see
only isolated close ups of her face as she puts on her make
up and Penn gradually reveals the room as something less
than the elegance that we might have expected from a Hollywood
thriller like "Bonnie and Clyde". "Bonnie and Clyde" is
notable for a shift with much more gruesome, violent sequences
that Hollywood had seen before; in fact Penn claims that
the sequence where Clyde shoots the manager of a bank in
the face as he tries to stop their car was the very first
time that a Hollywood film showed the shooter and the victim
all in the same single shot. If that is so, it's a startling
change that influenced the rest of Hollywood for good and
bad over the course of the next forty some years. ***
Penn, Beatty, screenwriters Benton & Newman (and an
uncredited Robert Towne who receives a "creative consultant"
credit since he couldn't claim a writing credit for his
work) do take some liberties with the story of bank robbers
Barrow and Parker but in the interest of the drama those
liberties work creating a film that examines the characters
and the world of foreclosed mortgages, depression era poor
people and the wealthy who just kept getting wealthier in
fine detail. Featuring stellar support from actors Gene
Hackman as Clyde's brother, Gene Wilder (in his film debut),
Michael J. Pollard and Estelle Parsons, "Bonnie and Clyde"
has aged gracefully. Penn's brilliant visual motifs stand
up surprisingly well. They draw attention to the characters
and saying as much with as little dialogue as possible.
Even where the facts are skirted (such as the fact that
Bonnie Parker was badly burned and had to be carried most
places by Clyde Barrow after a car accident), there's a
logical dramatic reason for doing so. ---
Image & Sound:
"Bonnie and Clyde" looks better than a depression era
robber baron in his finest clothes. The colors pop and while
the images are a bit soft at times (due to the aging of
the source materials), Warner has done a stellar job of
cleaning up the film making a marked improvement over the
previous DVD bare bones release from over a decade ago.
***
The Blu-ray looks stunning as well but fans should
be aware of the age of the film as this doesn't look quite
as stunning as a more contemporary film might. Nevertheless,
my jaw dropped as I haven't seen a print look THIS good
even when I worked at the UCLA archives or sat through the
film for the first time in one of Howard Suber's classes
on film genres. ***
Audio sounds quite good but, again, keep in mind the
original soundtrack was recorded, mixed and mastered in
mono as that was the standard when this film played in theaters.
Interestingly enough, fans will probably hear a better sounding
version here on the DVD than when it played in theaters.
Warner had so little faith in the film that it was released
to drive-in's and second tier theaters initially (they also
offered Beatty nearly half of the domestic gross as his
fee figuring the film wouldn't make a huge amount of money.
Someone at Warner probably paid with their job for such
a miscalculation). ---
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