To be honest, I didn't like this film as much as I like many other films which get the same rating as I give. But I give this one four out of four stars.
Why?
Besides being brilliantly written and acted, this film was a cinematic first. In more ways than one, this movie changed film making forever. Before 1967, all movies involving gangsters gave them a menacing appearance. Those movies usually portrayed protagonists on the run from a cold-blooded relentless killer. This killer never wins, and we applaud when he is gunned down.
"Bonnie and Clyde", as you probably know, is about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The Barrow gang went on a crime spree in the mid-30's. These gangsters are unlike any gangster seen previously. They are the heroes. We meet these two and they win us with their charm. We grow fond of them and begin to look at the authorities chasing them as the enemy. We learn to truly love the your affable couple. We pity them when they finally meet their end in the grisly and often imitated hail of bullets.
32 years later, we've seen the theme before. Just five years after "Bonnie and Clyde", Francis Coppola's "The Godfather" took this theme to new heights. The Corleone family was a family of killers and thieves. Yet we learn to love the family, and we feel sadness as they love members. Who forgets seeing Sonny being brutally killed (note the similarity to Bonnie and Clyde's death at the end) on the causeway? And who forgets Don Vito Corleone dying while playing with his grandchild?
The greatest thing about "Bonnie and Clyde" is simple; it works. Previously, the protagonist was always supposed to be a good person. Someone to emulate. He was a person on the side of law and God, facing (and defeating) insurmountable adversity. How does this work? Before "Bonnie and Clyde", it was always assumed that the hero was an American Hero. A criminal is no role model for our children, and it was just assumed that no one would ever be able to sympathize with people not on the side of the law. But Bonnie and Clyde prove something which we now take for granted; if the characters are right, we can love them.
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