Part of Weekend Classics: Lovers on the Lam
Small-time crook Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) tries to steal a car and winds up with its owner’s daughter, dissatisfied small-town waitress Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway). Their crimes quickly spiral from petty theft to bank robbery, but tensions between the couple and the other members of their gang –– hapless driver C.W. (Michael J. Pollard), Clyde’s suave older brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and Buck’s flibbertigibbet wife, Blanche (Estelle Parsons) –– could destroy them all. Based loosely on the exploits of the real life Depression-era bandits, director Arthur Penn’s ultraviolent genre-resurrecting masterpiece became a blueprint for a new generation of filmmakers.
“A milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful.” —Opening sentence of Roger Ebert’s very first review, published September 25, 1967