Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Blood, Sweat, and Charm
The movie is 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, which I had the joy of seeing a few days back. Despite blood, shooting, and car chases, this is definitely a character-driven movie and a festival of excellent acting. My first viewing was a child, a bit too young to appreciate the many subtleties - though I was definitely impressed by being immersed in a 1930s world of faded colors, poverty, and dust. Some critics were a initially put off by a movie that sympathized with robbers and killers - at some point, the word 'anti-hero' was coined. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway bring much charm and credibility to the roles - part of the characters' charm is their spotty judgement and competence, and their failure to see where their actions are leading them. The Beatty-Dunaway relationship is intense, but interesting, Clyde is impotent, much to Bonnie's frustration and chagrin. Beatty's wonderful line 'I ain't no loverboy' is doubly ironic in the mouth of an actor who was the period's most notorious womanizer. I'm not sure if the real Clyde was gay or bisexual. I believe the real Bonnie and Clyde owed their 1930s 'popularity' to the impoverished and unemployed movie-going public of the Depression era, which perhaps sympathized more with the robbers than with the banks... In one scene, Bonnie & Clyde break into a seemingly abandoned house and find a family disposessed of their home by a bank...
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