Bonnie and Clyde (Two-Disc Special Edition)

by Arthur Penn (Director)

DVD, 2008

Call number

DVD-DRAMA 453

Collection

DVD

Publication

Warner Home Video (2008), Edition: Special Edition

Description

A mixture of comedy and brutal violence, this film is based on the exploits of the notorious American outlaws of the 1930's, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

Media reviews

The New Yorker

A landmark movie, this account of the lives of the 30s outlaws Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) keeps the audience in a state of eager, nervous imbalance; it holds our attention by throwing our disbelief back in our faces. In a sense it’s the absence of sadism—it is

the violence without sadism—that throws the audience off balance. The brutality that comes out of the innocent “just-folks” Barrow-family gang is far more shocking than the calculated brutalities of mean killers. And there is a kind of American poetry in a stickup gang seen chasing across the bedraggled backdrop of the Depression—as if crime were the only activity in a country stupefied by poverty.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member papacromer

One of the landmark films of the 1960s, Bonnie and Clyde changed the course of American cinema. Setting a milestone for screen violence that paved the way for Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, this exercise in mythologized biography should not be labeled as a bloodbath; as critic Pauline Kael wrote

in her rave review, "it's the absence of sadism that throws the audience off balance." The film is more of a poetic ode to the Great Depression, starring the dream team of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the titular antiheroes, who barrel across the South and Midwest robbing banks with Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman), Buck's frantic wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), and their faithful accomplice C.W. Moss (the inimitable Michael J. Pollard). Bonnie and Clyde is an unforgettable classic that has lost none of its power since the 1967 release. --Jeff Shannon

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