DVD/150: BONNIE AND CLYDE (Arthur Penn, 1967)

Like most iconic films, the origins of BONNIE AND CLYDE are surprisingly unexpected.

Writers David Newman and Robert Benton had read the same book on 1930s gangsters and were intrigued by a footnote referencing Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker and their nomadic 2-year crimewave across the southern and central states.

Influenced by the French New Wave, they sent their script to Godard and Truffaut, but both declined; Truffaut however met Warren Beatty later and told him about them.  Beatty contacted them and, producing for the first time, got grudging support from Warner Brothers, ironic as they thrived with their 1930s gangster films.

Leading directors refused, potential Bonnie's came and went but eventually Arthur Penn said yes and he, in turn, had been impressed by a young stage actress who had just appeared in two recent supporting film roles, Faye Dunaway.  It remains an audacious piece of mythic film-making.

Shelf or charity shop?  BONNIE AND CLYDE are hiding out on the shelf.  A film that oddly plays both inside and outside of it's genre, these contrasts make it still vital. Beatty's usual blank performance against Dunaway's relentlessly modern one creates it's own tension. The original script had Clyde bi-sexual but producer Beatty had it changed thinking it was going to be hard enough keeping mainstream audiences 'sympathetic' to the couple.  The influence of Godard and Truffaut is palpable but the locations chosen are the dusty low-rise main street buildings and wide open plains that the real couple would have been familiar with. Beatty remembered Gene Hackman's supporting role with him in 1964's LILITH and offered him the role of Buck, Clyde's jovial older brother which essentially launched his career; it's strange that in retrospect, although Beatty, Dunaway, Hackman and Michael J Pollard's getaway driver CW were all nominated, it was Estelle Parsons' shrill, whining Blanche Barrow that won the film's only acting Academy Award.  This was also Gene Wilder's screen debut in a marvellous scene where he and his girlfriend are kidnapped for an afternoon and just as they are becoming friendly, his admission of being a funeral director changes the mood immediately - indeed the scene pivots the film's tone totally to one of approaching doom. The film's release was negligible as Jack Warner disliked it, pushing the Taylor/Brando flop REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE instead; after being challenged by Beatty it was given a different release and the audiences flocked in their droves, the film capturing the current anti-establishment mood.  Most reviewers panned it but Pauline Kael's glowing review/essay in The New Yorker made some critics revisit it and changed their minds over it, the NY Times reviewer Bosley Crowther keep panning it - and quickly lost his job!  Meanwhile Theodora Van Runkle's costume designs started a high street fashion outbreak of berets, jackets and mid-length skirts. The script of course plays fast and loose with the gangs real history but this was a prime example of filming the legend - and the ending has lost none of it's brutal impact.

 

DVD/150: IN COLD BLOOD (Richard Brooks, 1967)

In 1967 two films fueled debate about depecting true crime onscreen, do you make the killers sympathetic and cool (BONNIE AND CLYDE) or use brutal realism (IN COLD BLOOD)?  While BONNIE had a bigger effect culturally, BLOOD remains more unsettling, for several reasons.

In November 1959, ex-convicts Richard Hickok and Perry Smith drove 400 miles to rural Holcomb, Kansas to farmer Herbert Cutler's isolated home after hearing he kept $10,000 in a safe.  Once inside they discovered they were wrong, so in anger they shot Cutler, his wife and teenage son and daughter.

By the time they were arrested six weeks later, Truman Capote had travelled to Holcomb and started writing his groundbreaking IN COLD BLOOD, it's publication delayed by the six year wait for their appeals and eventual hanging.

Columbia wanted Paul Newman and Robert Redford but Brooks wanted relative unknowns so cast Robert Blake and Scott Wilson.

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf.  Richard Brooks bought the film rights swiftly after the book's publication and adapted it himself.  As I said above, he was determined to make the film he wanted to make which led to tensions on the set.  The result however has lost none of it's grim power and it's interesting that while BONNIE AND CLYDE has a relatively standard style, IN COLD BLOOD is unafraid to use flashbacks and dream sequences in it's non-linear documentary narrative.  The odd thng is that Brooks substituted Capote into a character called The Reporter who remains anonymous through the film, until becoming the narrator of the judicial killing of Smith and Hickok.  Brooks' unrelenting pressure-cooker atmosphere is achieved through the haunting b/w cinematography of Conrad Hall, the whiplash editing of Peter Zinner and Quincy Jones' discordant jazz score. Brooks filmed in the real locations - apart from the prison - including in the actual house where the murders took place.  They filmed there for four weeks and one can only imagine how that affected all concerned; I must admit I find all these scenes to be queasy and deeply uncomfortable.