Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is a film about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who roamed the United States' Southwest robbing banks during the Great Depression. The couple is eventually ambushed and killed by the police, as in real life. The film was directed by Arthur Penn and starred Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker. The screenplay was written by David Newman and Robert Benton, with Robert Towne doing some uncredited work.

The movie was partly filmed in and around Dallas, Texas, in some cases using actual locations that the real Bonnie and Clyde either robbed or used as hide outs.

On its release, the film was extremely controversial for supposedly glorifying two coldblooded murderers and its unprecedented violence--an honor which has since gone on to Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, and then to other, even more graphically violent (but largely forgotten) films. Bonnie and Clyde was innovative in its character's gunshots--the squibs commonly used today, where a charge causes a small bag of red liquid to explode out of the clothes, were invented for the movie. The movie took great liberties with the facts about Barrow and Parker. The real life couple were killers who murdered as many as thirteen people. The movie also was questionable in its portrayal of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle).

Estelle Parsons won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film, and Burnett Guffey won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work in the film. The film is #27 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies, #13 on its list of 100 American thrillers, and #65 on its list of 100 American romances. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

External Links

• Review of the Movie by Roger Ebert