Yesterday's Movies

Before watching the movie:

How about a run of titlular duos? And of course one of the most iconic cinematic duos is Bonnie and Clyde. I’d say that perhaps they had already achieved legendary infamy before the movie, but then, I’m even more sure that the movie romanticized and cemented their legacy. Would we be talking about a couple who were robbing banks across a few states almost a hundred years ago without the star power of Beatty and Dunaway keeping them in the public consciousness?

I should disclose that I’ve recently heard a summary of the actual Bonnie and Clyde’s career with commentary on what the movie changed, but I mainly remember just how badly the movie treated Blanche.

Bonnie Parker, desperately bored of her life as a waitress in a small Texas town, starts up a conversation with the young man trying to steal her mother’s car. Clyde Barrow, fresh out of prison, could do with a heisting partner, and Bonnie is incredibly excited by the idea of joining him. They form a romantic and criminal partnership, though to Bonnie’s disappointment Clyde has no interest in and apparently little ability to satisfy her more physical desires. Soon they pick up C.W. Moss, a gas station attendant, and invite him to join the gang as getaway driver and mechanic. They wander from town to town robbing banks and stealing getaway cars, but trying to direct their violence only at bank employees and officers of the law, and only to the extent they get in the way. Eventually they head off to add Clyde’s brother Buck and sister in law Blanche to the gang. Buck is just as much of a criminal as Clyde, but Blanche, as a preacher’s daughter, would prefer not to be involved in the violence and lawlessness (but still feels entitled to a full share of the spoils). She and Bonnie become instant enemies. Bonnie starts to want to return to Texas so she can give her family some of the money she’s collected, and on the way they catch Texas Ranger Frank Hamer attempting to apprehend them and humiliate him, starting his vendetta against the Barrow Gang, the final escalation in law enforcement’s heavy-handed pursuit of the giddy bank robbers.

I feel like the movie never quite captured the promised high of merrily robbing banks across the Depression South, stealing from the rich to pay… themselves. I’m not sure we saw any heist that ended cleanly and satisfyingly, only the ones that went wrong and got desperate where people were shot or killed. We hear about the locals supporting and celebrating them much more than we see it. What we do see in extreme detail, at a level that was controversial in the late 60s, is just how brutal the police are in trying to capture them, and how much the gang have to respond in kind.

It never occurred to me when I was watching, but I do have to agree that Beatty and Dunaway play more like they’re in the Roaring 20s than really feeling the despair of the 30s. But we see them backfooted and on the run much more often than the giddy “We rob banks!” they started off with that defines their place in pop culture. This is almost certainly the youngest I’ve seen Gene Hackman in a movie and maybe it’s because of the rest of his career coloring my impression, he still felt like the much older man who’s going to corrupt the gang’s joyful spree when he first entered the story, and I never fully got away from that, even as it became clear that he wasn’t going to be the cause of the trouble that dogs them the rest of the movie. And then there’s Blanche. She’s simply awful and apparently entirely unlike the real Blanche. I think I appreciate that she was one of the last living members of the gang and still around to object to the final result even if she approved the original script. There’s also a surprise Gene Wilder sequence in this movie. Apparently it’s his screen debut and he’s certainly much younger than I’m familiar with seeing him. He’s not fully the Gene Wilder he came to be known as, just a working actor in a slightly comedic role.

For all that the financial desperation of the time doesn’t make it to the screen (aside from the foreclosed farming family Bonnie and Clyde squat in the house of), the lengthy firefight with and run from the police that marks the beginning of the end communicates the brutally desperate situation of being on the wrong side of law enforcement that has is in full dead-or-alive mode. Where previous action sequences have had more slapstick beats to them, this is a purely serious and visceral run for their lives, and almost nobody gets out unscathed, and it keeps horrifyingly going and going like they can never stop running again.

As much as the real Barrow Gang has a legend larger than themselves, I think this movie has a legend larger than itself. It’s not quite as fun or romantic as its reputation, and the tragic ending isn’t as melodramatic as one is led to believe. It’s just stark, unmitigated carnage with just enough space to let what happened sink in, and roll credits. The romantic tragedy of The Outlaw Lovers Bonnie and Clyde as we know it is perhaps better portrayed by Bonnie’s own poem, excerpted in the movie but written by the real Bonnie Parker. Who better to know what it was like than the one who lived it, anyhow?