Film:  Bonnie and Clyde:  Ultimate Collector's Edition (on DVD)
Studio:    Warner Broters; Warner Home Videot
Director:  Arthur Penn
Principal Actors:  Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard
Release:  (1967) DVD release March 25, 2008
Film length:  112 minutes
Rating: R for violence 

5 Stars

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner (Kansas City Correspondent - USA) 

Readers who have followed AnEVibe for a while know about my childhood fascination with the film Bonnie and Clyde.  Seeing it at the age of eight (what were my parents thinking?), I was inspired to trick-or-treat as Bonnie with my older brother's Clyde the following Hallowe'en, and I began reading the real life story of this famous crime duo.  Growing up in a small town just northwest of Kansas City, Missouri, I had the added advantage of being able to visit the site of the Red Crown Tourist Court near Platte City, Missouri (seeing its remnants before it was completely torn down), the scene of a fateful shootout between local law enforcement officers and the Barrow gang.  And, the woman who ran the dry cleaning shop in my small town had been working as a waitress at the Red Crown restaurant that day, and could tell the thrilling story of how she, a slender nineteen-year-old, had, with the strength from adrenaline, helped drag the sheriff's wounded son to safety.

Watching the film again now, knowing all that I have learned since my first viewing-learning inspired by that first viewing-is a bittersweet experience.  For Bonnie and Clyde is a film much more about the time in which it was made than it is about its subject matter.  Warren Beatty's Clyde and Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker are the ultimate in 1930s-inspired 1960s cool.  These are stylish people with attitude, not a pair of societal misfits shooting and running their way through middle America in the Great Depression.  One wanting to know about the real criminals should use this film as a starting point to inspire research and not accept its story as fact. 

That being said, the film is still a fascinating story.  From their first meeting as Bonnie, naked, calls out from her upstairs window to prevent Clyde stealing her mother's car, there is obviously a spark between these two characters.  In the time required to walk downtown and consume a bottle of Coca-cola, Clyde completely sizes up Bonnie, a bored, frustrated small-town waitress longing for more from life.  Presenting his past of armed robbery and prison time-with neither brag nor apology-he entices her to join him in a life of being somebody.  Their smart-talking, teasing banter makes them a fun couple to watch, and when they befriend a poor farmer ousted from his home by a bank foreclosure, there is a desire to cheer for them as modern day Robin Hoods when Clyde proudly says, "We rob banks."

The film begins to earn its R rating for violence before long, when Clyde's attempt to rob a small grocery store leads him to pistol whip a cleaver-swinging butcher, and the first murder of the film occurs shortly after in the course of a bank robbery.  Audiences were not prepared for the violence of this act, coming on the heels of a comic moment when Clyde's new young confederate, C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) made the mistake of parallel parking the getaway car, then couldn't escape the parking space.

Once Clyde's older brother, Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife, Blanche (Estelle Parsons, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance), join Bonnie and Clyde, a seemingly unending journey of violent shootouts begins, with the gang's only relief coming from taunting Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle) and taking a young undertaker (Gene Wilder, in his first film) and his girlfriend (Evans Evans) joyriding until he lets slip his occupation and Bonnie orders him out of the car. 

The violent depiction of the Red Crown shootout (erroneously set in "Platte City, Iowa" in the film) offers one of the noisiest and bloodiest gun battles of its time, with Buck receiving a wound that would prove fatal and Blanche suffering partial blindness.  The next battle, in Dexter, Iowa, leaves Buck dead, Blanche captured, and Bonnie and Clyde seriously wounded.  C. W. takes them to his father's home in Louisiana.  The father, one perceived as a trusted friend, negotiates a deal for his son by helping law officers ambush Bonnie and Clyde with the film ending in a black screen just after the notorious shooting of the bandits.

Bonnie Parker's own recognition that "Death is the wages of sin," as she wrote in her poem "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde," is certainly a message of the film.  But when the final scene shows the officers stepping out of the roadside brush to survey  the bullet-riddled car and Bonnie and Clyde's bloodied, lifeless bodies, the audience's sympathy rests with the outlaws.    

The Special Features are a tremendous bonus to this truly collectible edition.  The Making of Bonnie and Clyde offers commentary from all the principal actors, director Arthur Penn, and others behind the scenes of the film.  Warren Beatty served as producer as well as star of the film, a position that was rare and considered bold in 1967.  He had to ask twice before Arthur Penn accepted the job of directing.  Upon first seeing Faye Dunaway, Beatty questioned whether she was right for the part, but could tell she was "going to be a big deal."  For Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde "was the first big feature I got my hands on."  Of all the roles she has portrayed, Dunaway says Bonnie is closest to herself:  "The Southern girl wanting to get out." 

Beatty had previously worked with Gene Hackman and "wanted him for my brother."  Estelle Parsons had previously worked with Arthur Penn.  When he offered her the part, she began to research Blanche's life with the Barrows.  "I knew more about them than anyone else in the movie wanted me to know."  At the time the film was made, Blanche Barrow was still living.  Parsons very much wanted to meet her, but Penn and Beatty questioned whether that would be a good idea.  Then, after shooting began, Parsons became wrapped up in the character of Blanche as written and lost the desire to meet her real-life subject. 

Film editor Dede Allen observed Bonnie and Clyde was "one of the early anti-hero pictures," making the audience feel empathy for the bad guys.  Another first sprang from the juxtaposition of comedy with killing, something that had not been done before this film.  It created an unsettling experience for the audience.  Penn observed in past films, violent scenes of gunshots were always presented with a cut between the firing of the shot and its hitting a victim.  Bonnie and Clyde changed that.  When a bank owner pursues after a robbery and jumps on the running board of the getaway car, we see Clyde place his gun against the window and fire, and, in the same shot, see the man's face bloodied by the fatal hit.  I can remember watching a television newscast at the time of the film's release in 1967, with this scene presented in a story that reported a new turn in film violence. 

Also included is a History Channel documentary,  Love and Death:  The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.  This presents the real-life story of the notorious couple, with leading scholars and authors, including John Neal Phillips (Running with Bonnie and Clyde:  The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults; My Life With Bonnie and Clyde, with Blanche Caldwell Barrow).  This includes real photographs of the Barrow gang, commentary by Clyde's sister, Marie, a filmed statement by gang member W. D. Jones (one of the characters upon whom C. W. Moss is based; the father of another, Henry Methvin, assisted in the real-life ambush), statements by Dallas law enforcement officers, and actual footage from the funerals of the bandits. 

To complete the set, there is a hard-cover book of photographs from the film and its making, and a re-creation of the 1967 Pressbook.