LGM Film Club, Part 489: Bonnie & Clyde

Tomorrow is my birthday (51, wtf?) and every year around now, I spend like a month or so watching a bunch of my favorite movies. I really need it right now. So I started with Bonnie & Clyde, which I hadn’t seen in a few years. It’s still remarkable that this picture got made given how restrictive on so much of this stuff the film industry was until about 5 minutes before its release. The other remarkable thing about this film is that 58 years later and all three of the major stars (Beatty, Dunaway, Hackman) all live. NO WAIT, ALL FOUR DO BECAUSE ESTELLE PARSONS ALSO LIVES!!! 97, wow. Michael Pollard died in 2021, alas. Also and sadly, Gene Wilder, whose small role in the film is so well played, is also gone. Not to mention Uncle Jesse as Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger. I love both Beatty and Dunaway in this film. Parsons is annoying as hell, but of course she’s supposed to be. It’s not really Hackman’s most well defined role, but he’s fine in it. Pollard was totally unknown when he was cast as C.W. Moss and did a more than good enough job with it.

It’s an odd film to me in that it perfectly encapsulates the mood of 1967 while also being more or less true to the atmosphere of rural America in the early 30s. It’s sexy even though Clyde’s inability to get it up is a major plot point, which is kind of an unimaginable plot point even today. Total cuck, that Clyde Barrow. It’s violent, yes, but not gratuitously so until Bonnie & Clyde get their end. Then they really lay it on. I wonder if Sam Peckinpah saw that scene and was like, shit, I can blow someone away better than that if this is allowed now. It’s funny and wink-wink toward the audience while also being cool as all hell. I’ve just never really felt this film was dated like, say, The Graduate. So I watch it every other year or so and it started my birthday viewing this year.

One more point, which is that this is pretty much the only Arthur Penn film that anyone watches anymore, with one highly underrated exception. I guess Little Big Man holds up alright. The Chase is…fine? People loved The Miracle Worker at the time, but it seems like it would be painful to watch today. As for Alice’s Restaurant, no thanks Arthur or Arlo. But the highly underrated exception is Night Moves, which is pretty much the perfect 70s film in vibe and tone to me. I will have to watch that again soon. I probably should own a copy. Criterion is releasing a version in March.