The LA Times Remembers ‘Bonnie and Clyde’
Bonnie and Clyde: “They’re young, they’re beautiful, they kill people”
For someone who wasn’t yet born when Bonnie and Clyde hit (including me), it might be difficult to understand what all the fuss was about, but the shockwaves from the collision of the European art house film with old Hollywood continue to resonate today even if the original impact is but a distant memory.
Bonnie and Clyde made careers and opened the door to the American golden age of the 1970s when so-called art movies could also be huge box office hits.
In anticipation of the long overdue Ultimate Edition DVD release of Bonnie and Clyde, complete with a new documentary and a 36-page hardcover photo book, the LA Times talks to some of the principles involved.
Some quotes after the jump.
Warren Beatty, Producer/Clyde Barrow:
I was arguing with Jack Warner about Bonnie and Clyde, and he said to me, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s fine, kid, that’s your opinion.’ Then he says, ‘You have your opinion, but you do know whose name is up on the water tower, right?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, hey, look, it’s got my initials!’
Gene Hackman, Buck Barrow:
I remember just sitting there in the car, the five principal actors, all of us there filming, and thinking to myself, ‘Man, isn’t making movies great? How terrific is this business?’ I thought it was always going to be just like that. It wasn’t, I’m sorry to say. It was as good an experience as I’ve ever had.
Arthur Penn, Director:
It was vital to me that the film be a new American gothic. . . . The movie was released into a world where kids were burning draft cards and feeling beset by their own government. We rang a big bell with this film. A very big social bell. We had no idea how it would reverberate around the world.
The Bonnie and Clyde Ultimate Edition comes to DVD and Blu-Ray on March 25.
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Great, beautiful film.
Will definitely have to check out the Blu-Ray version.
That Gene Hackman quote sounds so familiar and so the norm for so many people in Hollywood, perhaps especially actors. It’s too bad life doesn’t go swimmingly all the time but it just doesn’t, and while everyone who sticks around for a while takes the bad with the good.
It really is a film that, from today’s perspective, doesn’t seem like anything nearly as earthshaking as it was back at the time. It really was one of the films that showed that the establishment, like Jack Warner and Bosley Crowther, was behind the times and out of touch.
I fell in love with this as a very young girl and NEVER stopped adoring it. It’s just so bloody fascinating and exhilarating, right up until the tragic and inevitable end.
When I finally had the DVD in my hot little hand as an adult woman, I was beyond joyful. Talk about a rite of passage.
I could go on for pages. This film’s brilliance on every imaginable front is well documented. But it’s one of the many reasons I worship Faye Dunaway.
She was the coolest green eyed blonde I’ve ever seen. I had a fierce identification with Bonnie ever since I first saw that movie on television. I was nine. From the opening scene, you can see that she’s dreadfully bored and dissatisfied. She’s waiting for something - ANYTHING - to come along and show her what life is all about. Her ticket out of all that is Clyde. It’s clearly not what she expects and when the scenario changes, it’s literally deadly. But it’s such a thoroughly mad, genius fueled rush…
I would love to see it in a theatre. I hope that I will one day. It must have been unbelievably powerful for people in 1967. None of those people were big names at the time, including the director - and Ms. Dunaway, Mr. Beatty and Mr. Hackman have long been some of the biggest and best stars the industry has ever had. These unknown quantities can really catch you by surprise sometimes.
Incidentally, all of my friends know that I can do a fairly decent Faye Dunaway impression. “I surely don’t intend to stand in the middle of Main Street…and look at your dirty feet.”
CLASSIC. All the way around…
As I recall, the big deal about B&C back in ‘67 was its presumed amoral (to some) point of view. A lot of people were just so flipped out that the lead characters were glamorized and that violent, unlawful behavior was glorified. It’s really true what Penn said about draft card burners and anti-government sentiments. This film I think caught the fancy of those who defied the system because it was corrupt and, in their view, immoral.
This was an era when defying authority and legality was occurring more frequently and in the name of morality — causing, naturally, those who disagreed to become more disapproving and hostile in their opposing view. B&C sort of rubbed it in their faces by lending legitimacy to what many viewed as hooliganism.
And of course Faye and Warren were easy on the eyes.
Faye was a knockout. Actually, she still is.
I love Warren Beatty’s quote about his initials. :-)
As far as Faye and Warren’s spectacular beauty (BOTH OF THEM), too true.
Hmmm. 1967 was really the end of an era, was it not, Pierre? In 1968, there was rioting (in the US and in Paris), lots of talk about Vietnam and the election of Nixon. The deaths of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were all right around the corner as well as Kent State etc. Pretty grim stuff after all the peace and love hyperbole. But, considering that it was all long before my birth, I’m getting it second hand.
What I’m stumped by is the prevailing attitude that you described. How could people think that B&C were “immoral” when they were effectively punished for their supposed “sins” at the end? Though it’s a true story based on actual events, the studios were making entertainment like this back in the days of the Hays Code.
They were reckless and wild kids. But compelling and utterly mesmerizing to watch. They paid dearly for everything that they did - and the truly sad thing is that they were utterly misguided. I don’t think that they ever intended to hurt or harm anyone. Aside from the realistic violence (which was a fairly big deal for that particular era) I would have thought that the high and mighty moralists would have eaten it up with a spoon.
I totally remember this one {something I have been unable to do recently, I think I bumped my head}. I thought it was a good movie with great acting…I can understand why it would have made such a huge difference in cinema in those days {…in the old says…lol}, and I get how it could have been groundbreaking stuff. It just did not floor me, maybe because it did not intend to, if it floored everyone else when it was first released. It would be a lie if I said it meant all that much to me, maybe if I think about it with those points in mind and think about the era it came out of, and then re-watch it, I might end up whistling a different tune.
Miranda, I think one of the things about Bonnie and Clyde, and why it was seen by many as being downright malodorous, was because it was a film that not only dared to tell its story from the side of the criminals, but that it made the violence they suffered cinematically hurt worse than the violence they inflicted. There are one or two scenes where the audience is treated to a taste of the brutality Bonnie and Clyde dish out, but for the most part Arthur Penn was audacious enough to essentially flip the 1967 audience’s expectations. Typically with crime films, the injuries and deaths of policemen were treated as worthy of great sympathy from the audience while for the most part the violence criminals suffered was seen as either morally correct or just a natural outcome considering their place in society.
In Bonnie and Clyde, Penn inverts the expectations. Shots of cops occur in long shot, whereas the grisly details (for 1967) of the criminals’ wounds is visually expounded upon. It goes directly against what was the formerly natural perspective of films of this type at all, which had previously only shown violence against the “bad guys” as necessarily ineluctable.
The lambent message of previous films detailing these scenarios was normally one of caution towards the audience, and in many ways Bonnie and Clyde didn’t actually change that message but flipped the didactic paradigm not so much in substance but in form.
As you sagely note, the message of the film is ultimately very conciliatory toward the “mighty moralists” of whom you write, though at the time much of this was apparently drowned out by considerable protest.
“How could people think that B&C were “immoral” when they were effectively punished for their supposed “sins” at the end?”
Thanks, Alexander, for your comments.
“Though it’s a true story based on actual events, the studios were making entertainment like this back in the days of the Hays Code.”
The Hays Code was instituted in order to address crime-themed pictures (as well as sexuality) so that the film would assume a clear moralistic point of view. From about 1934 until the mid-1960s, Hollywood films were constrained by the code. Occasionally, there were exceptions (The Moon Is Blue, Anatomy of a Murder come to mind), but it wasn’t until films like B&C and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? came along that the code was disregarded in such a high-profile way.
Several years ago I saw a screening of Chinatown and Faye Dunaway came to do a little Q&A afterwards. She’s still stunning.
Nick, is it possible your expectations were just really high because you’d heard what a classic it was? Same thing happened to me the first time I saw Citizen Kane.
You’re a fortunate gentleman, Mr. Kennedy. It would be unbelievably cool to see Ms. Dunaway in person.
She’s one of my childhood idols.
Indeed, Miranda. Faye is fabulous. I loved her in Network especially, but she is always fantastic.
I haven’t seen Mr. Beatty lately, but he was definitely real eye candy in his prime. One of the first films I saw him in actually was Heaven Can Wait, the remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
She could be icy on screen, but in person she came across pretty warm…kind of distracted in that artsy way.
What was cool was that it’s not like she was doing it to promote her latest movie. I’m sure she had plenty of better things to do than haul her ass across town to answer questions of a bunch of film nerds about a movie she’d done 25 years before, yet I think she came simply because the movie still meant something to her.
The cinematographer John A. Alonzo was also there and I got the impression it was the first time she’d seen him in a while and it was a nice moment.
Alison, I loved Heaven Can Wait. From Beatty and Christie to Cannon and Grodin, to the Dave Grusin theme.
It’s a rare remake that actually does something interesting with the original and stands on its own.
Bonnie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Heaven Can Wait are my three favorite Beatty movies. Parallax View is good too.
I agree about Heaven Can Wait, Craig. Excellent casting. Grodin and Cannon were both hilarious, and Cannon was actually doing a few comical roles at the time.
And Jack Warden made an appearance as his coach. I always liked him as a character actor. And James Mason, who I believe was in the original, also made an appearance as Mr. Jordan, if I remember correctly.
Yeah, I really liked that movie. Great casting, loved the musical theme, enjoyable all around.
“Bonnie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Heaven Can Wait are my three favorite Beatty movies. Parallax View is good too.” Love all those films and Beatty in them. Shampoo seemed like the perfect record of an aspect of its time and sensibility. I greatly admired Reds, and enjoyed Dick Tracy and Bugsy too.
Yeah, Jack Warden and James Mason.
My favorite Jack Warden movie is Used Cars, but that’s another thread…
“Shampoo seemed like the perfect record of an aspect of its time and sensibility” Exactly. I didn’t live in LA in the early 70s, but I can imagine it. Shampoo is an interesting double bill with Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. They don’t have much in common besides the setting and a 70s sensibility….oh and they kick ass.
That is very possible Mr. Kennedy. Great Expectations.
I loved Faye more in Network, so much. She was um, cute, in Chinatown as well.
I have only seen Beatty in Bonnie & Clyde and Reds, I would love to see Shampoo.
Did I read somewhere that there is a B & C remake in the works? I don’t know what I’m talking about. Seriously, it could have been a dream or something. Anyway, I hope it’s not true.
“Did I read somewhere that there is a B & C remake in the works?”
Did I just throw up in my mouth a little?
Answer A: I don’t know.
Answer B: Yes.
Haha, like I said, I don’t know where I’m coming up with that, but you can’t rule anything out - nothing is sacred anymore. This is how rumors start though, isn’t it?
Remake B&C? Outrageous, I say. When is Hollywood going to learn that you only remake bad movies, the ones that you can actually improve upon? Why would you remake something that was perfect to begin with? There would be no point. Plus I can just imagine who they’d cast…and no, I’m not going to mention any names.
Nice to get your impressions of the fabulous Ms. Dunaway, Craig. If there was anyone I could ever have the exquisite privilege of meeting and talking to in person she would be right at the top of my list.
Alison, as far as Mr. Beatty is concerned, there were not many men of his generation that had a greater impact on me. Certainly I admire him enormously for his brilliance and his impact on the film industry in general. Reds is a work of art and appears to be rather underrated to this day. Don’t hear much discussion about it. What did you think of Reds, Nick?
But Shampoo is killer. I’ve always had a soft spot for savage satirical films. If I can be a red blooded woman for a moment, the sequence where Mr. Beatty was clad in that white open shirt with the TIGHT black pants (and that all gorgeous, leonine hair) - and then when he and Julie Christie are um…discovered on the floor during that party is….rather distracting. To say the least. Alison, eye candy is just the start. I’m sure you get my drift…
To be honest, some years before I bought it, my mom was up watching Shampoo with me late at night when I was at my parents’ place. I can distinctly remember her reaction at one point. We could hardly keep the smiles off our respective faces. I just shook my head. “That MAN…” “Yeah,” she said, “physically, he’s pretty damned impressive.” Generally speaking, we don’t have the same taste at all.
Bugsy was absolutely awesome as well. He and Annette had the most crackling chemistry. No wonder they got married. The strong, fiery relationship that Bugsy and Virginia Hill shared reminds me a lot of my own life. Some patterns exist for a reason.
But moving on…
Jack Warden was one of my all time favourite character actors. He was always good, if not great - and it didn’t seem to matter what kind of wreck he was shoehorned into. His scenes were always a joy to watch and often hysterically funny. He had a wonderful comedic gift but he was an excellent dramatic actor as well. I miss him to this day.
I’ve asked this question before and have not gotten a satisfactory answer: can anyone confirm or deny for me a thematic/stylistic connection between Shampoo and Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game?
Craig, I tried to answer that query two months ago (check out your review of Cloverfield to find my theory).
Long story made shorter: Yes, I do think Ashby was going for what Renoir went for with Rules of the Game–essaying a particular moment in time historically for a nation and its culture through the microcosm of a specific story, and in each case displaying the kind of apathy among “the elites” of each respective society (late ’30s France, 1968 America) that helped to usher in the “troubles” to shortly follow.
The thing is, as much as I love Shampoo–and I do–it’s a bit of a “cheat,” compared to Renoir’s masterpiece simply because Rules of the Game’s depiction of the “upper echelon” of France was a present snapshot–perhaps a bit more like Oliver Stone’s Wall Street than Ashby’s Shampoo since Ashby afforded himself seven years (Shampoo, I believe, being released in 1975).
One could write a decisively penetrating paper on the thematic and stylistic connection. I’ve never directly read that Ashby was going for that exactly but even if he wasn’t, he artistically stumbled into it as surely as a bear in a trap.
I remember what you’d said Alexander….though I couldn’t remember exactly who said it and when.
I think I won’t rest until someone presents me with concrete evidence that Ashby or Beatty were directly inspired by Rules.
Though they cheated in a sense, I still think they were speaking about their own time, though technically the events in the film happened years before.
Maybe it only seems like it to me living after the fact, but it feels watching it like they really captured the time and place during which the film was made, as Christian said earlier.
It’s a shame Ashby died so young, for a voluminous number of reasons, but you can add reason #5,155 now–Craig needing concrete evidence on the Shampoo-Rules of the Game connection. ;-)
As soon as I finished my post, Craig, I figured I should have added something along the lines of, “When I say they ‘cheated,’ it’s only in the most technical of senses–Shampoo certainly speaks of its own time, the mid-’70s, and only utilizes the 1968 election evening setting as the ‘launching pad’ of its own era.”
There, now I’ve retroactively covered my ass, ahaha.
I’m sure Christian’s right, because Shampoo certainly feels like a film capturing that time with exquisite detail and convincing atmosphere.
Man. Ashby. What a run in the 70s though, huh? I mean if you’re going to burn out young, what a fucking legacy to leave behind. We should all be so lucky.
I think I got what you meant about cheating. Renoir had the stones to talk about his own moment in history without fudging.
Yeah, the story behind Rules of the Game is quite the interesting one, and the historical background is certainly a huge part of that.
Interestingly, Renoir would certainly appreciate any fine filmmaker’s attempt to grapple with their own moment in history by using an historic backdrop. See: The Grand Illusion from 1937. Renoir clearly was enormously sensitive and saw what was coming and he summoned all the courageous greatness of his own art to try to fight it.
Yeah, I just had a big discussion with some pals the other evening after seeing The Nickel Drive and The Friends of Eddie Coyle at the Castro, and we were talking about the 1970s. Quickly, I brought up Ashby, and made the case that, in actuality, he has the absolute best run, in terms of both prolificness and sheer potency. I mean, how can anybody compete with the insane consistency of The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home and Being There? Coppola may win out because of his slugging percentage–he hit 500-foot homers with men on base with The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: Part II and Apocalypse Now, but Ashby made seven legitimately excellent//near-great/great films in a row. Coppola and Ashby both burned out, so to speak, in different ways, and Ashby was stolen from us, but he leaves a vital legacy.
Miranda, I thought Reds was brilliant, and it was all because of what Beatty put into it, you could tell he was really passionate about the project. The entire cast were spot-on good, great casting if you ask me. I am very, very fond of it, and am dumbfounded that it is underrated. It seems to me that the subject would have created a stir in the US in those days, maybe not to the point where it is highly rated today though. I don’t know.
Alexander, though Ashby might not have hit the towering home runs of Coppola in his prime, I’m more impressed by his batting average. I guess I’m an Ichiro Suzuki guy and not a Barry Bonds guy.
Not that I’d take anything away from Coppola, I’m just saying Ashby needs to go in the Hall of Fame.
Nick, I think a lot of people in the US were put off by the politics of Reds and in a way ti’s been swept under the carpet.
It came out during a time of resugrent conservatism in this country and that might have something to do with it being underrated. Speculation on my part.
I think what you are saying is what happened, and in that case I understand. I don’t really care that it is underrated, as long as I like it, right? They can’t all be popular I guess.
Your opinion is all that matters Nick my boy, and for the record in this case I agree with you. Reds isn’t my favorite Beatty movie, but it’s pretty amazing all the same.
And with that…I’m off to bed for a couple of hours.
Nicky, SO glad you love Reds. I do as well. It’s in my DVD library (which is getting larger as we speak). It’s certainly (in a great career filled with a lot of excellent work) one of Diane Keaton’s best performances. She is fierce in that.
I really enjoyed the way that Louise (Diane) and John (Warren) attempted to make that relationship work. (Minus the infidelity, of course. There’s freedom and then there’s FREEDOM, in my view. If you’re going to make a commitment, MAKE ONE. Don’t play at it. You can’t have everything all at once. Life isn’t like that.) When Jack (as Eugene O’Neill) came into the picture it got even more fascinating. But it was inevitable that someone’s heart was going to get broken…BADLY.
When I first heard Jack say, “You’re a lying Irish whore and you used me to get John Reed to marry you,” I almost burst out laughing and it wasn’t because it was funny. He did forgive her in the end though. It’s likely, however, that he never forgot.
So there’s that whole sweeping epic thing that I constantly fall all over. But it has to be done right. It’s a beautifully shot picture, too. Obviously, the morality that the principal characters embrace is not really specific to that time and place. They were a group of bohemian intellectuals so I think they really thought they were above it all in some respects. But they were truly fascinating individuals. Even more so because they actually existed.
I think Craig’s assessment is pretty much on target, Nicholas. North America (particularly the US) goes through periods of moderate conservatism and fairly middling liberalism. Never very extreme, it seems. But the pendulum swings back and forth. However, in some quarters in the US being called a “liberal” is a dirty slur that some faint hearted people would never successfully recover from. John Reed and Louise Bryant weren’t liberals. They were COMMUNISTS. So that’s left wing on a whole other planet.
Reds was launched in the latter part of 1981 (I don’t know if it had a platform release, which makes the most sense - from what I’ve heard it hit my city around November - so it likely was a Christmas or January release in the smaller markets and in the south and midwest) , which is over 25 years ago now. I know from reading mags like Premiere and the like that people were amazed that Warren was able to get a major studio on board to finance a film about a romantic triangle that had Communism and Russia as part of its essential narrative. Hmmm…But I understand that Mr. Beatty can be quite the persuasive personality, so….
I never got over the fact that Reds lost the Oscar for BP. Either that or Raiders should have won. Chariots Of Fire is so endlessly lame. I watched it once on television years ago and I have not the slightest desire to revisit it. EVER.
Well, Reds was nommed for a ton of little gold men and won Best Director for Mr. Beatty and BSA for the fantastic Maureen Stapleton. Considering the way America is (or can be - and especially considering that this happened in another time) I shouldn’t be upset that Reds lost but glory in the fact that it was up for recognition at all.
Yes, Nicky, your opinion IS the only one that matters. Especially when it’s MY opinion as well. Not to worry, young man, we’ll conquer the world one day. Just you wait and see…