The cities saw the rise of organized crime in the early 20th Century. Meanwhile, for a few years at the end of the 20s and into the early 30s, the small towns and rural areas of the American Midwest and South saw a collection of the classic outlaw, updated for modern times. Instead of gangs of robbers riding horses, the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger, and the Ma Barker Gang drove from town to town, hitting banks or in some cases pulling off kidnappings for ransom. The stars of this particular movie are Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, more simply known as Bonnie and Clyde.
Aside
from their long string of crimes, the duo was widely known for the simple fact
that they were a devoted romantic couple (Wikipedia doesn’t even give them
separate pages). Also, like many of the highway robbers of the time, they
displayed a “ride-or-die” attitude, engaging in illegal and violent activities
with seemingly no actual exit plan. Eventually a posse of Texas and Louisiana
lawmen ambushed them on the Louisiana State Highway 154 on May 23, 1934,
riddling them with about 130 bullets. Over 30 years later, the famed villains
were turned into antiheroes in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde.
Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first New Hollywood films. By the late 60s, the stringent Hays Code was on its way out. At the same time popular culture was starting to grow more cynical and anti-authoritarian. As a result, Bonnie and Clyde (Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty) as well as their fellow gang members got a heroic lift. They can be chummy with random strangers (including hostages), openly sympathize with farmers struggling with the effects of the Great Depression, and are just all around likeable people when not robbing banks. Actually, one of the stranger aspects of the movie is that while romanticizing the leads it still presents a couple of their ugly moments, such as when Clyde blasts a civilian in the face for hanging onto their car in an attempt to slow them down. For the most part, though, their violence is directed at law enforcement, reflecting the counterculture of the time.
Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde (Warren Beatty) pull into a gas station.
The
first major inaccuracy is right at the beginning when Bonnie and Clyde meet. In
real life they met normally at a mutual friend’s house, getting along and
deciding they liked each other. In the movie Bonnie sees Clyde trying to steal
her widowed mother’s car. They hit it off and Bonnie abandons her job as a
waitress to join Clyde (she had stints as a waitress in real life, though not
at the moment of meeting her lover).
Also,
Clyde is already a bank robber when they meet. The real story is more complex.
Clyde was a friendly guy when he fell in love with Bonnie, but was more of a
non-violent petty criminal. He got arrested after he had already started dating
Bonnie. In prison Clyde witnessed some of the brutal treatment of troublesome
prisoners by the guards and worse was graped several times by one of the other
prisoners. Interestingly the movie has a made-up subplot where he can’t get it up. Some
viewers have read this as him being asexual, but it’s also (very subtly)
implied as post-grape trauma from what the assault he suffered in prison. Some
critics have even argued that Beatty’s Clyde is struggling with suppressed
homosexual urges.
Clyde Barrow flashes a charming smile
while sitting on the front of his car.
When
he was released, Clyde was a much more violent man. Notably 9 of the 12 known
murder victims of Bonnie and Clyde worked in law enforcement. The movie Clyde
mixes the reported charm of the pre-prison figure with the career of the
post-prison figure. In the movie he’s always close to a smile and is downright
charming. In real life he had an infamously short fuse, getting violent with
hostages and even leaving them stranded and tied to trees after making his
getaways. He was so jumpy that he would often open fire at the smallest
movement.
The
real life Bonnie and Clyde were considered fairly attractive, but the movie has
them played by the far more appealing Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. They’re
also considerably taller, the real criminals being short even for their time.
Bonnie was less than five feet tall. As said earlier Bonnie is portrayed as a
bored small town girl. Of course the movie can’t get into everything, but
Bonnie had actually married to a man named Roy Thornton who also was a chronic
criminal. He was imprisoned during her time with Clyde, and technically they
were never even divorced and she was still wearing her wedding ring while
living on the road with Clyde. What is featured in the movie is Bonnie’s
poetry. She was a bit of an artistic girl, having considered singing and acting
as a career, and she reflected on her criminal life with poems. She sent the
poems to newspapers who eagerly printed them and increased the gang’s notoriety
in the process.
Buck Barrow (Gene Hackman, second from left, joins his brother and Bonnie on a bank robbery.
(https://twentyfourframes.wordpress.com/2022/11/08/revisiting-bonnie-and-clyde-2/)
The
movie simplifies the membership of the Bonnie and Clyde gang, removing several
including the notably dangerous Raymond Hamilton. The youthful C.W. Moss
(Michael Pollard) is a hybrid of two real life members W.D. Jones and Henry
Methvin. Like Jones, Moss is a teenager who gets mixed up with Bonnie and
Clyde, in this case craving an adventurous alternative to his boring life like Bonnie.
More relevant to the plot, Moss’ behavior in the last act reflects Henry
Methvin, who convinced Bonnie and Clyde to hang around his father’s Louisiana
home and then possibly betrayed their location to the police.
Gene
Hackman (incredible actor, rest in peace) plays Clyde’s older brother Buck
Barrow. Like other members of the gang, the film version is much nicer than the
real man, a jovial fun-loving guy who always lightens up the mood. The real Buck
wasn’t just mean, he was far nastier towards hostages than Clyde and once used
barbed wire to tie two captured policemen to a tree. The real Buck also hated
having to answer to his younger brother, while here there’s no friction between
them at all. His wife Blanche, however, somehow manages to come off worse than
her historical counterpart. The real Blanche had been trying to get her husband
to reform, but to no avail. Out of a sense of wifely duty, she rode with the
gang while refusing to use a gun like Bonnie. In the movie Blanche (Estelle
Parsons) looks older, gets comically hysterical, and verbally snipes with Bonnie, a
shrill and negative counterpoint to the glamorized outlaw. Blanche was actually
still alive and had helped with the movie’s production, so she was dismayed to
see what had been done to her image.
Once
the gang is assembled, the movie is a series of robberies and gunfights, with
one misty-lens break when Bonnie convinces the gang to visit her mother. Such
visits actually happened a few times, as Bonnie would sometimes miss the
normalcy of her family. One of the more accurate moments is gunfight after the
July 20, 1933 Platte City job, when the gang really took a beating during their
escape. Buck was mortally wounded, Blanche blinded, and Bonnie wounded. The
movie takes a much more dour turn after this scene, leading to the final death
of the titular leads.
Bonnie plays with Sheriff Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle) after his capture.
Since
the criminals are made more sympathetic and in a couple cases more glamorous,
law enforcement is not presented all too well. The sole named character on
their team is Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle). In real life he was a competent Texas
Ranger who used his intelligence and sense to track down Bonnie and Clyde and
decide what to do when he and his posse caught up with them. Here he’s a fat
Texas cop and something of a boob, easily getting captured and humiliated. His
pursuit of the protagonists in the last act is motivated by a petty desire for
revenge rather than an attempt to see justice done.
This
leads to the final ambush. Many of the details are debated thanks to varying
accounts, but the movie is for the most part accurate to how it happened.
Methvin’s father (Moss’s father in the movie), parked his truck on the shoulder
of the road near where Hamer’s posse hid. This got Clyde to slow down when his
car came. Where the movie differs is that Clyde parks and exits the vehicle to
talk to Ivan Moss whereas in real life the car had slowed down, but not stopped
at all. Hamer, knowing the outlaw couple would instantly start shooting their
way out, had his men open fire immediately. Because of how the movie frames
it’s characters, the killing comes off as excessive police brutality when of course
in actual history the lawmen wanted to absolutely make sure they wouldn’t be
shot at themselves.
Bonnie and Clyde was highly
controversial upon its release. It glorified real-life murderous criminals and
the violence was heavy for the time. But it clicked with audiences and was an
incredible box office hit. Personally I flip-flopped on the rating. The movie
is so well-made and acted, but I tend to be sensitive to the romanticizing of
certain historical villains. I decided to judge it more as a movie.
Rating:
8/10
If you want a movie that depicts the historical figures more accurately, try out The Highwaymen. It's told from the perspective of Hamer and his posse as they hunt for Bonnie and Clyde.
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