Bonnie & Clyde Through the Lens

Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 1967, including Best Picture. It won for Best Cinematography, and Estelle Parsons won the Best Supporting Actress award as Blanche Barrow. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty starred as Bonnie and Clyde, respectively, and Gene Hackman, as Buck Barrow, and Michael J. Pollard as C.W. Moss joined Parsons in supporting roles. All five actors received Oscar nominations. Arthur Penn directed the film.

Bonnie and Clyde tells and shows a romanticized version of the story of real life Depression-era bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. From 1932 to 1934 they led a crime spree that began in Texas and stretched from New Mexico to Missouri before getting killed by lawmen in Louisiana. The plot plays out in a series of nine scene sequences, beginning with Bonnie’s and Clyde’s first meeting and continuing until the final series of scenes ending with their deaths.

The opening credits establish the setting of the movie. A series of sepia-tinted candid photographs appearing to date from the 1930s show rural life during that difficult time: A grandmother and child, three generations of a family next to a tree in winter, a child following his mother outside a ramshackle house and broken-down barn, young boys wearing overalls and girls in sack dresses and boots standing outside a white washed schoolhouse. With each successive photograph, each on screen only a moment, the click of a camera shutter is heard. The first credit, a black background with white lettering turning to red and then fading from the screen, is wedged between a series of seven or eight photographs. The rest of the credits appear the same way, the sound of the clicking camera eventually joined by a love song in the style of that era. The credits end with three sentence biographies of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

Clyde’s bio dissolves into a big close-up of full, freshly painted red lips. This is the first image of the first sequence of scenes, a sequence I consider among the best I have ever seen in film. The lips turn to the left, and the camera follows, toward a mirror where we first see, in reflection, the face of Bonnie Parker. She is standing close to the mirror, examining her lips and eyes. At first her expression is one of satisfaction, but it quickly turns to something pensive and sad. The camera pulls back as she turns from the mirror looks around her small room with an expression of contempt. Her contempt is magnified by the lighting and color in the image: The brownish-pink skin of her face and bare shoulders and chest, the brownish-golden tint of her hair, the washed out brown walls, everything brown except those red lips. The camera follows her in medium close-up to her bed, where she plops down on her right side, the camera position slightly above her and capturing her full face between the bars at the head of the bed frame. She looks at first petulant, then empty, as she hits the bed frame several times with her right hand, a reaction to tedium. She grabs the bars of the bed frame and pulls herself toward the camera, her face now upright, framed squarely in the center of the image, her eyes empty, and her mouth curling into a sneer. We begin to sense that her life plays out this way every day. She rises quickly, and the camera zooms in to show only those empty eyes, completely devoid of life. The camera holds that close-up for about six seconds. Then she quickly rises and crosses to her bureau, pulls something out of the drawer and stands behind a changing screen. The emptiness is replaced by a look of despair, and she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She walks across the floor to her window, and stands bare-breasted in the frame, the petulant look returning to her face as she scans the street below. The entire scene takes about one minute, but the character of Bonnie Parker has taken root, established entirely by the camera, setting and face of Faye Dunaway.

Bonnie looks down on the street, the camera shot providing us with her point of view, and she sees Clyde sticking his head inside her mother’s car. She smiles a bit at this intrusion into her hopeless world. The camera shifts back and forth between perspectives, hers looking down at this handsome stranger, a respite from her boredom, and his looking up at an apparently naked woman in the window. She tells him to wait there, grabs a dress to put on and rushes down the steps to the front door, emerging with more anxiousness than she cares to have him see. She gains her composure, and they begin a dialogue as they walk into town.

The camera moves steadily along with them as they walk down the street. In the background you see a clapboard house, a yard with a small shed, a couple of cars up the street, some sort of truck depot, and some open-sided truck trailers with grain in them. Clyde tells her that he was just released from prison, which adds some danger to this new acquaintance. A matched cut advances their walk to the center of downtown, and they pass a boarded up theatre, several nondescript storefronts, one with a black man sitting on a bench in front. Otherwise, the town is without pedestrians or character. It looks as though the town is empty and boarded up, a sign of the times. The scene jump cuts to a big close-up of Clyde, his head back, a match sticking out of one side of his mouth, drinking from a bottle of soda. The camera cuts to a medium close-up of Bonnie, her bottle poised at her lips, looks of admiration and desire directed toward Clyde. The camera cuts to a medium two-shot, Clyde still drinking, Bonnie appearing to look past him as she forms a question in her mind. She asks him what armed robbery is like, he says it’s not like anything, and she accuses him of being a faker. He surreptitiously shows her his handgun, and, after stroking its barrel, she challenges him to use it.

He rises to the challenge, walking across the street and into Ritts Groceries. The camera draws back to a slightly elevated wide-angle long shot of Main Street. Clyde is walking across the street; Bonnie follows a few steps back and stops in the middle of the street. The shot implies desolation in the town. There is none of the activity you would expect for the main street of a small town during the day. The street is wide, the buildings on either side are brownish-red brick, and the sun casts a late afternoon glow on the scene. Three parked cars are the only indication that there may be other life in the town. Clyde goes into the store, Bonnie watches expectantly. Clyde backs out of the store, his gun aimed at the door, turns to show Bonnie the cash, and they begin to run down the street toward one of the parked cars. The camera returns to the wide-angle shot of Main Street as the storeowner rushes out toward them. Clyde fires a shot over the head of the storeowner, and the camera cuts to a medium shot of Clyde and Bonnie getting into the car, properly introducing themselves to one another, and driving out of town. The camera pulls back to the wide-angle shot a third time as people come running out of the seemingly abandoned buildings, drawn by the sound of the gunshot. The camera returns to the escape, alternating medium close-ups of Bonnie kissing and hugging Clyde shot from inside the car to long shots from various angles of the car careening through the countryside, bluegrass banjo and guitar providing the traveling music. The green trees, the red wheels on the two-toned car, and soft late afternoon light provides a warm contrast to the dull shades of the opening scenes. Clyde pulls off the road and stops the car, Bonnie becoming sexually aggressive. The deep despair she experienced in her room only a short time before is now replaced by exhilaration. Clyde rebuffs her advances, and explains to her that he is no lover boy. Frustrated, she replies that his “advertising is just dandy, folks would never guess you don’t have a thing to sell.”

Clyde explains to her that they are alike; they both want something different than what life has given them so far. He tells her that she deserves better than life as a waitress in West Dallas, and that together they can “cut a path clean across (Texas), and Kansas and Missouri, and Oklahoma, and everyone would know about it”. He convinces her that she is something special to him. Scene shifts to a booth in a diner. The camera shifts from medium two-shots to close-ups of each of them as Clyde tells Bonnie the story of her life, his read deadly accurate. He ends by saying “…and you go home everyday and sit in your room and say ‘when and how am I ever going to get away from this?’ And now you know”.

This sequence of four scenes lasts about 11 minutes. In that time, the director builds a foundation for developing the characters of Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie is susceptible to low lows and high highs, full of passion and impatience, and in the end, fatalistic. At first, she doesn’t seem to attach any moral significance to their actions. Robbing and killing are part of her escape from the despair of West Dallas. Clyde is perceptive, charming, and sees crime as a way to make money during tough times. He steals from institutions, not people, and means no harm to anyone.

A perfect example of their differences occurs later, after C.W. Moss joins their gang. The scene opens with a long shot of the main intersection of a small but busy town. In contrast to the scene of their first robbery in West Dallas, the streets are full of cars and pedestrians. They rob the bank, and their getaway is impeded because C.W. parked the car. The banker jumps onto the running board of the car. Clyde shoots the man in the face. They escape down a dirt road, and the scene jump cuts to a movie theatre. The first shot is filmed from the back of the theatre, where the three of them sit with the backs of their heads visible in the foreground, and the chorus singing “We’re in the Money” from Gold Diggers of 1933 on the screen. The camera moves to the front of the theatre, a medium shot of the gangs’ faces. Clyde, agitated, is using his hat to hide his profile from passersby. C.W. is looking down, eyes watering. Bonnie is completely intent on the movie. Again from the back, with tighter shots on the backs of their heads, Clyde is admonishing C.W. for stupidly parking a getaway car. A close-up of Clyde, sweaty, remorseful, nearly apoplectic, is followed by a medium shot of the three of them, as Clyde tells C.W. that a man was killed because of C.W.’s stupidity. The camera shots a close-up of C.W., who’s on the verge of crying and is breathing heavily. Bonnie leans forward in order to not be distracted by Clyde’s diatribe. Clyde finally erupts, grabs C.W. by the back of his collar, and threatens to kill him if he ever does anything that stupid again. Bonnie turns, hushes them, and says that “if you boys want to talk please go outside”. She is completely unaffected by the killing of the banker. She turns back to the movie, her legs pulled up and her arms around her knees, enjoying the film without a care in the world.

The sequences in the middle of the film take place over the course of a year or more. Buck and Blanche Barrow are forced into joining the gang after Buck kills a lawman in a shootout in Joplin, Missouri. Extreme long shots displaying the beauty of the Missouri and Texas countrysides as the gang drives from place to place are juxtaposed with violent scenes of shootouts when the gang arrives at their destination. A long passage of time is accounted for when Buck reads aloud newspaper accounts of the gang’s robberies and alleged robberies.

Visually, Depression-era 1930s is seen at every turn. An old truck, weighed down with a family’s possessions, is carrying them away from a home repossessed by the bank. The residents of a shantytown near a small pond provide fresh water to the gang after a shootout. General stores, diners, barbershops, and grocery delivery boys all contribute to the tapestry.

The final sequence of scenes has some of the most interesting camerawork in the film. Buck is killed in a shootout, and Blanche is blinded and captured by the sheriff in Platte City, Missouri. C.W. drive Clyde and Bonnie, both badly wounded, to hideout at his father’s house in Louisiana. Ivan Moss appears hospitable but resents what they’ve done with his son, and he conspires to turn them in and save his son.

The scene opens with a car going by, completely out of focus. The director is using selective focus, blurring the foreground and keeping sharp the background. The camera pans slowly to the left, giving the effect of spying with binoculars. A sign for the NRA, a barbershop, a poster of FDR, a sign reading Department of Water, Arcadia LA, a Coca Cola sign above the word Pharmacy, and a Call for Philip Morris sign all move across the screen. The pan continues to the next storefront, Eva’s Ice Cream Parlor, and stops. The camera pans downward to show Ivan Moss speaking to a man whose back is to the camera. A store clerk brings a box of ice cream to the table, and Moss shakes hands with the other man. Moss stands, moves toward the door, and steps out into the sunlight. He pauses for a moment, looks left and right, a look of deep concern on his face. He walks away from the door, directly toward the camera. A truck passes between Moss and the camera and as it leaves the field of vision Moss is gone and the other man, a Texas Ranger seen previous in the film, emerges from the store. Ivan Moss has made his deal.

That evening, Moss warns C.W. not to ride back from town with Bonnie and Clyde the next day, setting up the two final scenes of the movie.
The camera is set for a medium, eye level shot from the driver’s side of Clyde’s car. He and Bonnie are carrying groceries and put them in the back seat on the passenger side, and Clyde goes around the car and sits in the driver’s seat with the door open. They are waiting for C.W. to come out of the hardware store where he went to get some light bulbs for his daddy. The interior shots are done at different angles, some from the backseat, as Bonnie and Clyde pass the time. Bonnie leaves the car and walks across the street to the hardware store. A sheriff’s car pulls in next to Clyde, who casually backs out of the space, intending to pick up Bonnie and head out of town. A close-up shows C.W. peering out from behind a curtain, certain that Clyde will outwit the sheriff as he always does. Clyde rolls the car up next to Bonnie, she gets in, and they drive off. C.W. is pleased with the result, thinking that Clyde fooled them again.

The last scene opens with Ivan Moss repairing a tire for his truck on the side of the road. He turns and looks down the road, expecting Clyde to drive by soon. The scene cuts to the interior of Clyde’s car, where they are discussing a plan to go back and get C.W. later. Scene cuts back to Moss working the tire when he sees the car coming around a curve in the road. Moss stands in the middle of the road to flag them down, and they pull over. Clyde gets out of the car and offers to help. Bonnie stays in the car. A montage of 29 images fills the next 20 seconds: Bonnie looks out the front window of the car, Clyde glances at Moss, Moss sees a car coming down the road, Moss looks at the bushes across the road, Clyde turns to see a flock of birds fly out of the woods, Moss watches them fly, Clyde follows their ascent, Bonnie looks sees them from the car, Moss looks back into the woods, the car continues down the road, Moss dives under the truck, Clyde looks down at Moss, Bonnie looks out the windshield at Moss, Clyde chuckles at Moss then looks into the woods, Bonnie turns to look into the woods, Bonnie turns to look at Clyde, he turns to look at her, and she smiles, her eyes full of life and love for him, and he moves toward the car as the gunfire erupts from the bushes. Hundreds of rounds are fired, the camera moving from Clyde to Bonnie to the gunners. Clyde falls in slow motion, Bonnie, still in the front seat, jerks wildly as the bullets hit her. The machine gun fire lasts for several seconds, and, when it stops, the bodies roll in slow motion to their final position. Two black men in the car that was approaching have stopped, and now approach, not sure what has happened. The shooters emerge from the bushes, led by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, and Moss rolls out from beneath the truck. The final shot is filmed from the opposite side of Clyde’s car, through a window with a bullet hole in it, sharp focus on the lawmen looking down at the bodies. Fade to black.

Bonnie and Clyde in many ways is a throwback to an earlier era of filmmaking. The story itself is set in the early 1930s, when gangster films were an emerging genre. The real life exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, George Nelson, and other depression-era criminals helped give rise to that genre. Also, there are several scenes, particularly in the early part of the film, where there is no dialogue, and Dunaway and Beatty show the story as well as any silent-era stars could do.

Bonnie and Clyde also had Character similarities to the film I did before, Grand Hotel. Bonnie and Grusinskaya, while culturally and socially opposites, both suffered extreme despair until meeting and following in love with big-hearted thieves. The Baron, with Kringelein, and Clyde, with C.W., each befriended a man who came to deeply admire their emotional benefactor. Both Baron and Clyde also made powerful enemies who, in both cases, brought about their deaths.

Bonnie and Clyde benefited from the use of color, which was generally not available, and from explicit images of violence, which was generally not acceptable in the earlier film era. I cannot image the story without the golden color of Faye Dunaway’s hair in the sunlight, or the red circles on Clyde’s white shirt as the bullets hit him.

Although I had seen the movie several times, it had been about 20 years since I last saw Bonnie and Clyde. This time I watched it differently than I did before. And it made the movie, and the experience, wonderful.