Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Bonnie and Clyde is a movie directed by Arthur Penn and tells the story of Clyde, a well-known criminal and Bonnie, a waitress who is intrigued by his actions. When they first met each other, Clyde was about to steal Bonnie’s car, which is owned by her mom. She gets intrigued about his actions and decides to become partners in crime with him. Their crime spree really kicks up when they formed their gang, consisting of C.W. Moss, a gas attendant, Clyde’s brother, Buck, and his wife, Blanche.

While on the crime sprees, they all rob banks from across Texas and the Midwest. During them, Bonnie starts to not like Blanche because of her cowardly nature and how much of a threat she can be to the gang’s survival. Blanche also doesn’t like Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W. because she finds that their actions are much too violent.

At around the time that it came out, Bonnie and Clyde falls under the category of New Wave movies, where it broke many Hollywood stereotypes and taboos. One example would be that the movie is much more violent than some of the previous movies that have been studied. In the ending scene, Bonnie and Clyde are helping C.W’s father fix a flat tire. While fixing the flat tire, Frank Hamer and many other sheriffs have found where they both are shot open fire. The ending scene has tons of blood when both were shot and has later been known as one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history.

Another new thing that happened during the movie that was new was Bonnie’s character. Bonnie is much different than the other female characters that were studied in previous movies like Emily and Susan in Citizen Kane, Ilsa from Casablanca, Norma and Betty from Sunset Boulevard, and Lisa from Rear Window. Bonnie seems to be more headstrong and in charge and much less passive than the other characters. Usually, many of the female characters used in older Hollywood movies were used as love interests and were portrayed as pure and angelic.

However, while Bonnie is somewhat of a love interest for Clyde, she ends up falling for him instead. Bonnie is also bored of what she does and she takes charge along with being much more independent. In the end, Bonnie turns out to be the most independent of all the female characters from the movies that have been studied so far.