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BONNiE AND CLYDE existed for me as myth and a glamorized treatment violence, which was a novelty to audiences in 1967 when the film originally premiered. Today, after the likes of CLOCKWORK ORANGE, NATURAL BORN KiLLERS, or any of the more recent TARANTiNO films, we can hardly engage with the film on this original shock-factor level. And yet, there is something strangely disturbing about its glossy veneer- as we follow the incredibly handsome pair BONNiE AND CLYDE around towns with white picket fences and picturesque little banks, all bathed in a warm, Technicolor glow.

BONNiE AND CLYDE was the first American film to really dwell on this level of gore, pioneering the use of slow camera motion to focus in on violent acts. Not the ‘fun and frolics’ Hollywood of before – and this is where the film begins to carve out its own, individual landmark on American cinema.

For me, what Director ARTHUR PENN did so brilliantly was to make his outlaws neither sinister freaks nor cruel tyrants. They are WARREN BEATTY and FAYE DUNAWAY, unsettlingly beautiful and at times gawky and fragile. As BONNiE says in her poem that immortalizes them:

“They call them cold-hearted killers
They say they are heartless and mean
But I say this with pride
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean”.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect to the film is the love between BONNiE AND CLYDE.  PENN subverts expectations by making the hero, CLYDE, impotent – shy and embarrassed about his failings, although openly honest about them: ‘I told you I weren’t no lover-boy’. And one of my favourite quotes from the consistently witty dialogue is BONNiE’S: ‘Your advertising’s just dandy… folks would never guess you don’t have a thing to sell’. And yet their love is almost truer than many of the thrill-seeking, sex-seeking modern-day pairs. The moments throughout the film where CLYDE protectively lashes out at anyone who dares cross his BONNiE, his awe for her, how they put up with each other and above all, how they discuss the far deeper issues that plague an individual’s consciousness – these are perhaps the true displays of a love that signifies ‘until death do us part’, which also turns out to be exactly the case. Far more than a lustful frenzy to satisfy basic urges.

BONNiE PARKER: I don’t have no mama. No family either.
CLYDE BARROW: Hey, I’m your family.
BONNiE PARKER: You know what, when we started out, I thought we was really goin’ somewhere. This is it. We’re just goin’, huh?

CLYDE BARROW: I love you.

BONNiE AND CLYDE are neither evil nor primitive, as it has often been said. They turn to crime as an alternative to the state of boredom of small-town life,  and violence, here, is a necessity, which sets the characters free, closer to the instinctive symbolism of violence and mythology of a child.  In essence they need to reinvent, rediscover the world from their own chaos.