University of Virginia Library

Stomach Churning

It should be noted that most of
the detractors of the film attack
Bonnie and Clyde because they
find its shockingly-realistic use of
blood - splattering violence
"stomach churning" (The Chicago
Tribune) or "unappetizing" (The
Chicago American). But surely
this is a specious tack for the
critics to follow when the real
Bonnie and Clyde were themselves
finally silenced by a thousand
rounds and when now every night
Americans can eat dinner as the
atrocities of Vietnam parade across
their television screens. Great films
can no longer afford to be shot
solely through rose-colored, Doris
Day lenses.

And Bonnie and Clyde is a truly
great film. The technique, the
scenes, and the characters are
uniformly memorable. The pace
and depth of the movie is astonishing
in the fact that the audience
is emotionally drained by laughter
in one scene, by sympathy in
another, and by horror in still
another. All this happens with such
an easy-flowing, smooth transition
that the audience is completely
hypnotized for the entire two hours
- which is all the more incredible
when one stops to consider that
national publicity has made the
film's basic story line almost as
well known as the story line of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Bonnie and Clyde begins with
scenes of light-hearted Keystone
Kops comedy, while Earl Scruggs'
quick-fingered banjo plays in the
background. But when the first
bloods spurts onto the screen from
the face of a bank teller, the audience
first feels itself caught in the
emotional dilemma of Bonnie and
Clyde-many of the scenes are still
hilarious, but the conscience balks
at allowing laughter when confronted
with so much murder and
gore.

As the situation for the Barrow
gang becomes more and more
desperate, the comedy deteriorates
into melo-tragedy and the banjo
background now strikes a very
discordant note. It is one of the
film's strongest points that, although
heir fate is as inevitable
as Oedipus', one is so mesmerized
by Bonnie and Clyde that right
up to the end there remains honest
faith that somehow they'll get away
after all.