1967 crime, dir. Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway:
IMDb /
allmovie.
Bored girl meets bad man. Death ensues.
This was the film that Badlands inspired me to go back and
watch: reviled by many contemporaneous critics for its gore and its
glorification of unalloyedly bad people (the Production Code had only
just been formally replaced by the MPAA rating system, though of
course it had been largely ignored for some time), but rather more
formative than Malick's piece in terms of the conventions of later
film. (Though the messed-up sexuality shown here would generally be
replaced later by enjoyable messed-up sexuality, at least enjoyable
to the people involved, because that way you get to show a sex scene.)
What really struck me here was the performance from Dunaway, whom I'd
only seen previously in the original Thomas Crown Affair where she
didn't especially impress. Here she's able to get her teeth into the
part and play probably the most complex character in the piece (though
that's not a very high bar); to me that was exemplified by a late
scene in which Bonnie asks Clyde what he'd do if they could start all
over again, and his immediate response is "have my hideout the other
side of a state border from the places I'm robbing". An armed robber
is all Clyde is and all he can conceive of being (and Beatty plays him
effectively as such)… and Bonnie, having committed herself to him and
his activities, realises that there is no way out, and she's going to
have to ride it to the end so she might as well do it with good grace.
Dunaway doesn't get lines that express her reaction, and has to do it
all with expressions and body language, but it's a superb piece of
acting.
Once more if you want more of my witterings you should listen to
Ribbon of Memes.
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