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Home , Attica Prison riot, Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor, Legend of Billy the Kid, Mickey One, Richard Loncraine

October 11, 2011 (XXIII:7) , BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967, 112 min)

Directed by Arthur Penn Writing credits & and (uncredited) Produced by Original Music by Charles Strouse Cinematography by Burnett Guffey Editing by Art Direction by Dean Tavoularis Costume Design by Theadora Van Runkle Earl Scruggs....composer: Foggy Mountain Breakdown Alan Hawkshaw....musician: "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde"

Warren Beatty...Clyde Barrow Faye Dunaway...Bonnie Parker Michael J. Pollard...C.W. Moss Gene Hackman...Buck Barrow Estelle Parsons...Blanche Pyle...Frank Hamer DAVID NEWMAN (February 4, 1937, New York City, New York Dub Taylor...Ivan Moss – June 27, 2003, New York City, New York) has 18 writing Evans Evans...Velma Davis credits: 2000 Takedown, 1997 “Michael Jackson: His Story on Gene Wilder...Eugene Grizzard Film - Volume II”, 1985 Santa Claus, 1984 Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, 1983 Superman II, 1982 Still of the Night, 1982 Jinxed!, Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Estelle 1980 Superman II, 1978 Superman, 1975 “Superman”, 1972 Bad Parsons)and Best Cinematography (Burnett Guffey). Selected for Company, 1972 Oh! Calcutta!, 1972 What's Up, Doc?, 1970 National Film Registry – 1992 There Was a Crooked Man..., and 1967 Bonnie and Clyde.

BONNIE PARKER (October 1, 1910-May 23, 1934). ROBERT BENTON (September 28, 1932, Waxahachie, Texas – ) won Best Writing Oscars for Places in the Heart (1984) and (March 24, 1909-May 23-1934). Kramer v. Kramer (1979); he also won a Best Director Oscar for Kramer v. Kramer. Some of his other writing credits are: 1994 ARTHUR PENN (September 27, 1922, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Nobody's Fool, 1984 Places in the Heart, 1982 Still of the Night, – September 28, 2010, Manhattan, New York City, New York) 1978 Superman, 1977 The Late Show, 1975 “Superman”, 1972 has only 27 director credits, several of them for TV series: 2001 Bad Company, 1972 Oh! Calcutta!, 1972 What's Up, Doc?, 1970 “100 Centre Street”, 1996 “Inside”, 1995 Lumière and Company, There Was a Crooked Man..., and 1967 Bonnie and Clyde. 1989 Penn & Teller Get Killed, 1985 Target, 1981 Four Friends, 1976 , 1975 Night Moves, 1970 Little Big ROBERT TOWNE (November 23, 1934, , Man, 1969 Alice's Restaurant, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1966 The ), an uncredited writer on this film, won Best Original Chase, 1965 , 1962 The Miracle Worker, 1958 The Screenplay Oscar for Chinatown (1974). Some of his other 36 Left Handed Gun, 1957-1958 “Playhouse 90” (5 episodes), 1955- are 2000 Mission: Impossible II, 1998 , 1996 1956 “Playwrights '56” (5 episodes), 1953-1955 “The Philco- Mission: Impossible, 1993 The Firm, 1988 Tequila Sunrise, 1988 Goodyear Playhouse” (12 episodes), 1953-1955 Frantic, 1987 Tough Guys Don't Dance, 1986 8 Million Ways to “Goodyear Playhouse” (5 episodes), and 1953 “The Gulf Die, 1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, Playhouse” (6 episodes). 1982 Personal Best, 1978 Heaven Can Wait, 1977 Orca, 1976 Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—2

The Missouri Breaks, 1975 Shampoo, 1974 , 1974 Chinatown, 1974 , 1973 , 1972 WARREN BEATTY (March 30, 1937, Richmond, Virginia) won a The New Centurions, 1972 , 1971 Drive, He Said, best director Oscar for Reds (1981). He has 29 acting credits, 1968 , and 1967 Bonnie and Clyde. among them, 2001 Town & Country, 1998 Bulworth, 1991 Bugsy, 1990 Dick Tracy, 1987 Ishtar, 1981 Reds, 1978 Heaven BURNETT GUFFEY (May 26, 1905, Del Rio, Tennessee – May Can Wait, 1975 The Fortune, 1975 Shampoo, 1974 The Parallax 30, 1983, Goleta, California) won best cinematography Oscars View, 1971 $, 1971 McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1970 The Only for this film and From Here to Eternity (1953). He shot 95 films, Game in Town, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1965 Promise Her some of which were 1971 The Steagle, 1970 The Great White Anything, 1965 Mickey One, 1964 Lilith, 1962 All Fall Down, Hope, 1970 Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?, 1969 1961 The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, 1961 Splendor in the The Madwoman of Chaillot, 1969 The Learning Tree, 1967 The Grass, 1959-1960 The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (6 episodes), Ambushers, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 How to Succeed in 1957 “Studio One in Hollywood”, and 1957 “Kraft Theatre”. Business Without Really Trying, 1965 King Rat, 1962 Kid Galahad, 1962 Birdman of Alcatraz, 1961 Mr. Sardonicuc, 1960 FAYE DUNAWAY (January 14, 1941, Bascom, Florida) won a Let No Man Write My Epitaph, 1959 They Came to Cordura, best actress Oscar for Network (1976). She has 111 acting 1959 Gidget, 1958 “The Donna Reed Show”, 1957 The Strange credits, some of which are 2009 The Bait, 2009 “Grey's One, 1956 The Harder They Fall, 1955 The Violent Men, 1953 Anatomy”, 2007 Cougar Club, 2006 Rain, 2006 “CSI: Crime From Here to Eternity, 1951 Sirocco, 1950 In a Lonely Place, Scene Investigation”, 2002/I The Calling, 1999 The Thomas 1949 And Baby Makes Three, 1949 All the King's Men, 1949 Crown Affair, 1997 In Praise of Older Women, 1996 The Knock on Any Door, 1947 Johnny O'Clock, 1946 A Close Call Chamber, 1994 Don Juan DeMarco, 1993 “Columbo”, 1993 “It for Boston Blackie, 1945 The Gay Senorita, 1945 Eadie Was a Had to Be You” (6 episodes), 1993 The Temp, 1990 The Lady, and 1944 U-Boat Prisoner. Handmaid's Tale, 1987 Barfly, 1984 Supergirl, 1981 Mommie Dearest, 1980 The First Deadly Sin, 1979 The Champ, 1978 DEDE ALLEN (December 3, 1923, Cleveland, Ohio – April 17, Eyes of Laura Mars, 1976 Voyage of the Damned, 1976 Network, 2010, Los Angeles, 1975 Three Days of the California) edited 32 films, Condor, 1974 The some of which were 2008 Towering Inferno, 1974 Fireflies in the Garden, 2004 Chinatown, 1973 The The Final Cut, 2000 Wonder Three Musketeers: The Boys, 1991 The Addams Queen's Diamonds, 1971 Family, 1990 Henry & June, The Deadly Trap, 1970 1989 Let It Ride, 1988 The Puzzle of a Downfall Milagro Beanfield War, 1986 Child, 1970 Little Big Off Beat, 1985 The Breakfast Man, 1969 The Club, 1984 Mike's Murder, Arrangement, 1968 The 1984 Harry & Son, 1981 Thomas Crown Affair, Reds, 1978 The Wiz, 1977 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, Slap Shot, 1976 The Missouri 1967 The Happening, and Breaks, 1975 Dog Day 1967 Hurry Sundown. Afternoon, 1975 Night Moves, 1973 Serpico, 1972 MICHAEL J. POLLARD Slaughterhouse-Five, 1970 (May 30, 1939, Passaic, Little Big Man, 1969 Alice's New Jersey) has 1007 Restaurant, 1968 Rachel, acting credits, some of Rachel, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1963 America, America, 1961 which are 2011 Sunburnt Angels, 2000 Forever Lulu, 2000 The Hustler, 1959 Odds Against Tomorrow, and 1948 Because of Danny and Max, 1998 The Unknown Cyclist, 1998 Merchants of Eve. Venus, 1993 Arizona Dream, 1991 Heartstopper, 1991 “The Toxic Crusaders” (13 episodes), 1990 Dick Tracy, 1990 Dark DEAN TAVOULARIS (May 18, 1932, Lowell, Massachusetts) won Angel, 1989 Tango & Cash, 1988 American Gothic, 1987 a Best Art Directions Oscar for : Part II (1974). Roxanne, 1986 The Patriot, 1980 Melvin and Howard, 1970 He was production designer for 31 films, among them, 2011 Little Fauss and Big Halsy, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 “The Carnage, 2001 Angel Eyes, 1998 Bulworth, 1996 Jack, 1993 Girl from U.N.C.L.E.”, 1966 “I Spy”, 1966 The Wild Angels, Rising Sun, 1992 The Godfather Trilogy: 1901-1980 (video), 1966 “Lost in Space”, 1959 “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”, 1990 The Godfather: Part III, 1988 Tucker: The Man and His and 1959 “ Presents”. Dream, 1987 Gardens of Stone, 1986 Peggy Sue Got Married, 1983 Rumble Fish, 1983 The Outsiders, 1982 Hammett, 1982 GENE HACKMAN (January 30, 1930, San Bernardino, California) One from the Heart, 1979 Apocalypse Now, 1978 The Brink's won a best supporting Oscar for Unforgiven (1992) and a Job, 1975 Farewell, My Lovely, 1974 The Godfather: Part II, best actor Oscar for The French Connection (1971); he had three 1974 The Conversation, 1972 The Godfather, 1970 Little Big other Oscar nominations, including best supporting actor for his Man, 1970 Zabriskie Point, and1968 Candy. role in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). He has 100 acting credits, some Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—3 of which are :2004 Welcome to Mooseport, 2003 Runaway Jury, Grizzly Adams (37 episodes), 1976 and the Indians, 2001 Behind Enemy Lines, 2001 The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001 or 's History Lesson, 1976 “Petrocelli”, 1974 The Life Heartbreakers, 2001 The Mexican, 2000 Under Suspicion, 1998 and Times of Grizzly Adams, 1974 “The Manhunter”, 1973-1974 Enemy of the State, 1996 The Chamber, 1996 Extreme Measures, “Kung Fu”, 1974 “Cannon”, 1956-1973 “” (14 1996 The Birdcage, 1995 Get Shorty, 1995 Crimson Tide, 1995 episodes), 1972 “”, 1961-1972 “” (8 The Quick and the Dead, 1994 , 1993 : An episodes), 1967 “”, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, American Legend, 1993 The Firm, 1992 Unforgiven, 1991 1967 Tammy and the Millionaire, 1967 Welcome to Hard Times, Company Business, 1991 Class Action, 1990 Postcards from the 1963-1966 “The Show” (6 episodes), 1953-1966 Edge, 1990 Loose Cannons, 1989 The Package, 1988 Mississippi “” (7 episodes), 1958-1966 “Perry Mason” (6 Burning, 1988 Full Moon in Blue Water, 1988 Another Woman, episodes), 1966 Gunpoint, 1965-1966 “Tammy” (26 episodes), 1988 Bat*21, 1987 No Way Out, 1987 Superman IV: The Quest 1964 “Twilight Zone”, 1964 “Dr. Kildare”, 1963 “Rawhide”, for Peace, 1986 Hoosiers, 1986 Power, 1985 Target, 1985 Twice 1963 “The Virginian”, 1962 “Lassie”, 1962 The Man Who Shot in a Lifetime, 1983 Under Fire, 1981 Reds, 1980 Superman II, Liberty Valance, 1961-1962 “Route 66”, 1961 “The Detectives 1978 Superman, 1977 A Bridge Too Far, 1977 The Domino Starring Robert Taylor”, 1956-1961 “Zane Grey Theater” (7 Principle, 1975 Bite the Bullet, 1975 Night Moves, 1975 French episodes), 1957-1960 “Have Gun - Will Travel” (7 episodes), Connection II, 1974 Young Frankenstein, 1974 The 1958 “Mike Hammer”, 1958 , 1958 Conversation, 1973 Scarecrow, 1972 The Poseidon Adventure, “Playhouse 90”, 1958 “Broken Arrow”, 1951-1956 “The Lone 1972 Prime Cut, 1972 Cisco Pike, 1971 The French Connection, Ranger” (7 episodes), 1956 Drums, 1955-1956 “My Friend 1971 The Hunting Flicka”, 1951-1954 Party, 1971 Doctors' “The Gene Autry Wives, 1970 I Never Show” (10 episodes), Sang for My Father, 1952-1953 “The Roy 1969 Marooned, 1969 Rogers Show”, 1953 A Downhill Racer, 1969 Perilous Journey, 1953 The Gypsy Moths, Gunsmoke, 1949 1969 Riot, 1968 Streets of San “Shadow on the Francisco, 1949 El Land”, 1967 Bonnie Paso, 1948 The Man and Clyde, 1967 from Colorado, 1948 Banning, 1967 “The Marshal of Amarillo, F.B.I.”, 1966 Hawaii, 1948 Train to Alcatraz, 1964 Lilith, 1963 1947 Where the North “Naked City”, and Begins, 1947 Devil 1961 Mad Dog Coll. Ship, and 1947 The Guilt of Janet Ames. ESTELLE PARSONS (November 20, 1927, DUB TAYLOR Marblehead, (February 26, 1907, Massachusetts) won a Richmond, Virginia – best supporting October 3, 1994, Los actress Oscar for her Angeles, California), work in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). She has 49 acting credits, one of the great character , has 243 credits, some of which some of which are 2011 Wilde Salome, 2005 “Empire Falls”, are 1994 Maverick, 1993 “Johnny Bago”, 1992 Falling from 2004 “Strip Search”, 2004 “Frasier”, 2002 “Law & Order: Grace, 1991 “The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw”, Special Victims Unit”, 2001 “100 Centre Street”, 1999 “Freak 1991 “Conagher”, 1991 My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, City”, 1998 “The Love Letter”, 1997 “Touched by an Angel”, 1990 Back to the Future Part III, 1984 Cannonball Run II, 1981 1989-1997 Roseanne (59 episodes), 1997 That Darn Cat, 1996 Soggy Bottom, U.S.A., 1980-1981 “Little House on the Prairie”, Looking for Richard, 1990 Dick Tracy, 1989 The Lemon Sisters, 1978 “How the West Was Won”, 1973 & Billy the 1976-1978 “All in the Family”, 1975 Fore Play, 1972 “Love, Kid, 1970-1973 “Love, American Style”, 1972 The Getaway, American Style”, 1970 I Never Sang for My Father, 1970 1972 , 1967-1971 “Bonanza” (6 episodes), 1970 A Watermelon Man, 1968 Rachel, Rachel, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, Man Called Horse, 1966-1970 “Gunsmoke” (7 episodes), 1969 and 1963 Ladybug Ladybug. The Reivers, 1969 The Learning Tree, 1969 , 1969 Death of a , 1962-1967 “Death Valley Days”, DENVER PYLE (May 11, 1920, Bethune, Colorado – December 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 “Custer”, 1965-1966 “Please Don't 25, 1997, Burbank, California) has 259 acting credits, some of Eat the Daisies” (5 episodes), 1965-1966 “The Virginian”, 1965 which are 1997 “: Reunion!”, 1997 The Cincinnati Kid, 1965 , 1963 Spencer's “Podunk Possum”, 1994 “Father and Scout”, 1994 Maverick, Mountain, 1961 Parrish, 1960 “The Westerner”, 1958 Auntie 1994 “L.A. Law”, 1988 “Murder, She Wrote”, 1986 “The Love Mame, 1958 No Time for Sergeants, 1957-1958 “Casey Jones” Boat”, 1979-1985 “The Dukes of Hazzard” (146 episodes), 1983 (32 episodes), 1956 The Fastest Gun Alive, 1955 I Died a The Dukes (20 episodes), 1977-1978 The Life and Times of Thousand Times, 1953-1955 “The Roy Rogers Show” (6 Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—4 episodes), 1949 Across the , 1949 Gun Law Justice, real when they died. It was’t until my father died that I began to 1949 Gun Runner, 1945 Both Barrels Blazing, 1945 Rough understand him.” With his elder brother Irving (later famous as a Ridin' Justice, 1941 Across the Sierras, 1940 The Man from photographer) he was taken by his mother, Sonia Greenberg Tumbleweeds, 1940 Pioneers of the Frontier, 1939 Mr. Smith Penn, to live in New York. Sonia Penn, a nurse, found work Goes to Washington, 1939 The Taming of the West, and 1938 there, but it was poorly paid, and food was scarce; the family You Can't Take It with You. often had to move to cheaper accommodation, living at various times in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and on the Lower East Side. EVANS EVANS (November 26, 1936, Bluefield, West Virginia) Between the ages of eight and ten, Penn reckoned, he attended at has 27 credits, among them 1994 “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”, least twelve different grammar schools. 1989 Dead Bang, 1979 Prophecy, 1973 The Iceman Cometh, When he was fourteen Penn returned to Philadelphia to 1969 “Mannix”, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1966 Grand Prix, 1963 live with his father. Harry Penn, according to his son, was “Death Valley Days”, 1963 “The Virginian”, 1963 “Wagon “withdrawn, taciturn, fastidious. He was an excellent mechanic Train”, 1962 All Fall Down, 1962 77 “Sunset Strip”, 1961 and a really brilliant engraver. He was full of art and his hands “Twilight Zone”, and 1960 “Juno and the Paycock”. were magical. But he was an evasive man for someone to try to make contact with. I think I’m like him in some ways. I’m not GENE WILDER (June 11, 1933, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) has 35 the most available of men, emotionally or personally.” Penn acting credits, including 2002-2003 “Will & Grace”, 1999 “The studied horology , with a view to following his father’s Lady in Question”, 1999 “Alice in Wonderland”, 1999 “Murder profession, but could summon little enthusiasm for it; his in a Small Town”, 1994-1995 “Something Wilder” (15 episodes), interests lay increasingly in the theatre, especially its technical 1993 “Eligible Dentist”, 1991 Another You, 1990 Funny About side—lighting, building scenery, etc. He also acted in student Love, 1989 See No Evil, Hear No Evil, 1986 Haunted productions at his school, Olney High in Philadelphia, and got Honeymoon, 1984 The Woman in Red, 1982 Hanky Panky, 1980 his first chance to direct at the amateur Neighborhood Playhouse, Stir Crazy, 1980 Sunday Lovers, 1979 The Frisco Kid, 1977 The very near his home. At this point, Penn had little experience of World's Greatest Lover, 1976 Silver Streak, 1975 The Adventure the cinema. He had been badly frightened by a film at the age of of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, 1974 Young Frankenstein, five, and “didn’t go back to the movies until I was about 1974 The Little Prince, 1974 “Thursday's Game”, 1974 Blazing fourteen. And then I saw a couple of movies, one of which was Saddles, 1974 Rhinoceros, 1973 “Acts of Love and Other Citizen Kane, which absolutely lifted the top of my head Comedies”, 1972 Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know off….Suddenly I was on to something that made the theatre look About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask, 1972 “The Scarecrow”, ridiculous. But I couldn’t admit it.” 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1970 Quackser After his father died in 1943, Penn spent six months in Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx, 1970 Start the Revolution New York waiting to be drafted and edging into theatrical and Without Me, 1968 The Producers, 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, 1966 intellectual circles in Greenwich Village and Harlem. Once in the “Death of a Salesman”, 1962-1963 “The DuPont Show of the army, he was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for training as Week”, 1962 “The Defenders”, and 1962 “Armstrong Circle a rifleman. In his free time he formed a small theatre group Theatre”. through which he met Fred Coe, later to produce much of Penn’s television and theatre work. Towards the end of the war Penn was transferred to Paris to join Joshua Logan’s Soldier shows, and he stayed on in Europe to run the company for a year after his discharge. He returned to the United States in 1946 and the following year enrolled at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. At this “incredible pressure group of talent and turned- on minds,” Penn studied “psychology, philosophy, literature and whatever I could overhear.” He also taught a class in acting and staged a number of productions there. After Black Mountain he spent two years in Italy, studying literature at Perugia and Florence, and then joined the Los Angeles branch of the Actors Studio, studying with Michael Chekhov. In 1951 he took a job as floor manager with NBC-TV in New York. Penn was assigned to The Colgate Comedy Hour, a top- rated show that featured, among others, Bob Hope, Eddie Cantor, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Starting as third floor from World Film Directors, Vol. II. Ed. John Wakeman. The manager, Penn worked his way up to assistant director, moving H.w. Wilson Co., NY 1988. Entry by Philip Kemp. west with the show when it was relocated to California. In 1953 Fred Coe, who had also joined NBC, invited him back to New Arthur (Hiller) Penn, American film theatre and television York to direct a live drama series, First Person. Penn also director, was born of Russian-Jewish immigrant stock in regularly directed plays for the prestigious Philco Television Philadelphia, where his father, Harry Penn, owned a small watch- Playhouse, and himself wrote three television plays. American repair business. When he was three, his parents divorced, an television was at the height of its fabled “Golden Age,” an event that had a traumatic effect on him. “I stopped believing in exhilarating era of burgeoning talent, creatively experimental the adult world. For me, Adults weren’t real—they only became work, and a wealth of live drama. “At that time TV was poor, so Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—5 we were free,” Penn commented later. “The actors were, in a The film was shot in only twenty-three days, using way, the best part of it. They taught us all more than we knew.” crumbling sets left over from Dieterle’s Juarez, twenty years In 1956 he began working for CBS, directing a number of works earlier. In the United Sates it was received with indifference. for Playhouse 90 including William Gibson’s The Miracle Penn, already infuriated that Warner Brothers had edited the film Worker, which aired in February 1957. against his intentions, was disgusted by the tepid response. “It During this period Penn was also building his career in was then that I thought I could no longer work in Hollywood, the theatre….Over the next two years Pen followed up this that I couldn’t stick it our any longer. So I went back to New success [Two for the Seesaw] with four more smash hits in a York and my theater work.” In the meantime, though, The Left- row: The Miracle Worker, Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic, An Handed Gun had found an enthusiastic audience in Europe, evening with and Elaine May, and Tad Mosel’s All especially in France, and it won the Grand Prix at the Brussels the Way Home. These productions were widely acclaimed, and Film Festival…. won numerous major awards; Penn was now one of the most It was four years before Penn directed another film. highly regarded directors in American theatre, “the most gifted When he did, he chose to adapt a work he had already directed young director since Kazan.” on stage and for television: William Gibson’s play The Miracle Several of Penn’s Broadway shows were produced by Worker, recounting how Annie Sullivan broke through the shell his old associate Fred Coe, and it was as a favor to Coe that he of blindness and deafness around the young Helen Keller and agreed to direct his first film, The Left-Handed Gun (1958). taught her to communicate. The film was to some extent Based on a television play by Gore Vidal, the film retells the hampered by its stage origins, as Penn himself acknowledged: legend of in “It’s half stage and half film. It psychological terms. Billy could have been liberated in (played by Paul Newman) is one instant from the stage, and depicted as a confused, I didn’t dare.” He also felt that inarticulate adolescent, “by then I had pretty much emotionally damaged by exhausted whatever degree of childhood experiences, who invention I had toward the “adopts” as his father an elderly material.” rancher who shows him kindness. Despite these When this man is killed, Billy limitations, The Miracle sets out to take vengeance on the worker (1962) remains a four killers, and is finally himself powerful and compelling gunned down by another film….The film received surrogate father, his friend Pat excellent notices. Bancroft and Garrett. Duke were both awarded Already, several of Oscars for their performances; Penn’s thematic preoccupations are in evidence: the search for a Penn was nominated for Best Director. His success, though, was father-figure; the concern with the roots of violence, and its short-lived. During the 1962-1963 Broadway season, in contrast consequences; the tension between myth and reality; and, above with his earlier string of theatrical hits, he directed three flops in all, the relationship between outsiders and the society from which a row. And one week into the shooting of The Train (1963), they are excluded—or exclude themselves. “I would say that the which starred Burt Lancaster, Penn was taken off the film and only people who really interest me are the outcasts from society. replaced by , apparently at Lancaster’s The people who are not outcasts—either psychologically, request. He was given no reason for his dismissal, then or later. emotionally, or physically—seem to me good material for selling The bitterness and sense of persecution engendered by this breakfast food but they’re not good material for films. What I’m experience left their mark on his next film, Mickey One really trying to say through the figure of the outcast is that a (1965)….A paranoid melodrama, deeply noir in tone, it tells the society has its mirror in its outcasts. A society would be wise to Kafkaesque story of a nightclub comedian (Warren Beatty) in pay attention to the people who do not belong if it wants to find Prohibition Chicago, on the run from mobsters who seem to out what its configuration is and where it’s failing.” intend vengeance on him for an undefined offense. The The Left-Handed Gun also displays a quality that has fragmented, elliptical narrative and deliberately signalled formal distinguished all of Penn’s films—an intense, immediate devices suggest the influence of French New Wave directors, physicality. “Physical sensation,” Robin Wood maintained, “is especially Truffaut and Godard, whose work Penn greatly perhaps more consistently vivid in his films than in those of any admired (Andrew Sarris once called him “the American other director.” Pain, in Penn’s movies, unmistakably hurts; Truffaut”). Mickey One was the first film over which Penn had tactile sensation is palpably communicated; and characters are complete control, with the studio (Columbia) not even allowed to conveyed above all by their bodily movements—how they walk, see the script. Penn also acted as his own producer, a function hold themselves, use their hands. Billy the Kid, illiterate, unable that he usually prefers to avoid….Robert Kolker, commending it to grasp abstract or symbolic ideas, can only express himself as “a work of great energy and visual imagination,”... has argued through his body. In Newman’s performance, his lunging, that Mickey One is central to a consideration of American cinema groping movements suggest a man trying to seize thoughts that in the 1960s, and to the development of . ...At the time, he lacks the means to articulate. though, most reviewers were bewildered or contemptuous, and the movie did poorly at the box-office. Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—6

Penn now regrets his next movie, The Chase (1966)—”a To some degree, Bonnie and Clyde is in the tradition of such poor film...with some fairly extraordinary passages in it.” It was movies as Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937) and Nicholas his first film in color, and the last he directed under the Ray’s They Live by Night (1948), whose doomed young criminal traditional system: shooting entirely in a studio (Columbia), with protagonists were similarly presented as sympathetic figures. an all-star cast, under the aegis of an old-style Hollywood These were also, however, shown as hapless victims of society, producer (Sam Spiegel). The story, scripted by Lillian Hellman criminal and outcast largely against their will. Bonnie and Clyde, from a play by , focuses on the tensions that ignite on the other hand, embark on their larcenous activities without into violence in a small Texas town when one of its citizens, an the least resistance and with enormous gusto, bucketing off down escaped convict, makes his way home. Violence is rarely absent the dirt roads in a stolen V-8 to the accompaniment of Flatt and from Penn’s movies, but The Chase is perhaps the most deeply Scruggs’s cheerful banjo theme, with the police in futile pursuit. imbued with violence of all his films—more so, even, than Penn has always been (as Louis Giannetti pointed out) “acutely Bonnie and Clyde. attuned to the spiritual crises of his generation,” and the sense of Many critics found this emphasis on violence excessive cultural alienation and rebellion that characterized the late 1960s and self-defeating, but Penn intended it to reflect an intrinsic found its ideal echo in Bonnie and Clyde’s anarchic amorality. element in the American psyche. “America is a country where Penn commented that “a time creates its own myths and heroes. people realize their views in violent ways—we have no tradition If the heroes are less than admirable, that’s a clue to the times.” of persuasion, idealism, or legality.”… Penn’s view of his heroes, though, is ambivalent and far from In the theatre, at least, his luck had improved...Penn uncritical. For all the film’s exhilarating sense of fun, Bonnie and might indeed at this juncture have abandoned the cinema, had not Clyde are clearly shown to be doomed by their own shallowness Warren Beatty persuaded him to direct Bonnie and Clyde (1967). and intellectual limitations. Toward the end of the picture, with David Newman and Robert Benton had already offered their death closing in, Bonnie wistfully asks Clyde what he’d do if screenplay to Truffaut and to Godard before it was bought by they could begin again. “First off,” he says, “I wouldn’t live in Beatty. He decided both to star and to produce, and invited the same state where we pull our jobs.” Penn—with whom he had established a good relationship on Penn also makes skillful use of abrupt switches in mood Mickey One—to direct. The result was, in the opinion of many to pull his audience up short. During a bank robbery, the cutely critics, Penn’s finest film, and the one that firmly established his moronic C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), waiting in the getaway reputation as a major director. It was also, without doubt, one of car, notices a parking space down the street, and tidily reverses the most significant and influential American films of the decade. into it. Bonnie and Clyde, rushing out laden with the spoils, are The story is based on the real-life exploits of the Barrow Gang, unable to find the car. This is hilarious; but thanks to the delay, who achieved notoriety in the 1930s as bank robbers in the rural an elderly bank teller has time to leap on the running board, and states of the American South and West. The gang was much Clyde shoots him full in the face—in close-up. It is the gang’s given to self-publicity—taking each other’s photographs, sending first murder, and anything but comic. This ambiguity— letters and poems to the papers—an attribute on which Penn encouraging us to sympathize with with crime, yet sparing us builds to create a complex, ironic, and often lyrical study of the none of the consequences—leads inexorably to the famous final social potency of romantic myth. Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) sequence, in which Bonnie and Clyde are almost literally “blown and Clyde Barrow (Beatty) live for their own myth, are caught up away,” in hypnotically prolonged slow motion, by hundreds of by it, and finally die for it; and in narrating their story the film bullets: a sight, wrote Louis Giannetti, “repellent in its savagery winds further layers of myth around them, in which the viewer and riveting in its lyricism,” that paradoxically enhances through can hardly avoid becoming involved. Bonnie and Clyde are its very excess the mythical impact of their deaths. depicted as violent, irresponsible, yet undeniably attractive On initial release, Bonnie and Clyde was widely figures. attacked in the United States for historical distortion, bad taste, and the glorification of violence. Not all American critics were hostile, though; Pauline Kael perceptively defended the film in the New Yorker, observing that it “puts the sting back into death.” In Britain and France reviewers were highly appreciative, and their enthusiasm, supported by the critics of the film quarterlies, helped the movie on its way to becoming (in Robert Kolker’s phrase) “a social phenomenon and a major influence on many films and filmmakers.” It received ten Academy Award nominations (including one for Best Director), and won three Oscars: Newman and Benton for their screenplay; Burnett Guffey for the cinematography and Best supporting actress for Estelle Parsons, playing Clyde’s hysterical sister-in-law Blanche.

Clyde's Texas mug shot

Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—7

Besides proving his first major cinematic success, political advantage.”...Critical response to Little Big Man was Bonnie and Clyde marked a new departure in Penn’s approach to mixed, but mainly enthusiastic. In Focus on Film (Spring 1971) film making. Henceforth his pictures tended to be looser, more Tom MIlne called it “perhaps the first Brechtian .” After episodic in structure, showing less concern for a conventionally completing the film, though, Penn underwent a personal and coherent storyline. His plots became psychological crisis: “I lost my identity.” increasingly unpredictable, deliberately For five years he did no work in theatre or subverting audience expectations with television, and directed no films apart ellipses and abrupt shifts in tone in a way from one section of the eight-director that can be traced largely to the influence documentary on the 1972 Munich of the French New Wave. At the same time Olympics, (1973). Pen’s he developed a more personal shooting section, “The Highest” dealt with pole style: Penn’s later films are notable for vaulting. their distinctively creative approach to He returned to feature films with color and their experimental use of lenses, his bleakest, most pessimistic work to filters, and lighting as a means of date. Night Moves (1975), based on a conditioning audience perceptions. Bonnie prickly, allusive script by Alan sharp, is a and Clyde was also the first collaboration detective story in the convoluted noir between Penn and the outstanding Dede tradition of The Maltese Falcon and The Allen, who subsequently worked on all his Big Sleep—but soured by the disillusion films until Four Friends. and malaise of the Watergate era. The In his next two films, Penn further private eye, Harry Moseby (Gene explored the theme of outsider groups and Hackman) is a depressed, despairing their relationship with mainstream society. figure existing in a state of moral Penn’s sympathies almost invariably lie paralysis, with none of the wit or with his outcasts, but he rarely present resilience of a Bogart. Obsessed with his them as blameless victims. In his films. own inner problems, he can do little American society is confronted by a toward solving anyone else’s. Penn succession of outsider groups, and is shown to be hollow and “thought it would be interesting to have a detective whose own oppressive. But ultimately the outsiders suffer defeat because for personality was part of the impediment towards the solution of all their charm they are infected with the flawed values of the problem that was confronting him….These people in Night conventional society. Or, as Philip French put it, “Two cultures Moves are some of the mourners of the Kennedy generation.” confront each other—a settled social world growing increasingly Following the classic pattern, Harry is called in to authoritarian, and a free-wheeling handle a seemingly simple anarchic community becoming assignment—a former actress wants increasingly corrupt.” Penn never him to trace her missing daughter— provides easy answers. “We’re part which then leads him into a of a generation,” he has said, “which labyrinth of further mysteries. But knows there are no solutions.” there is no grand explanation in the The outsider group in Alice’s final reel. Instead, Harry is left Restaurant (1969) are the archetypal wounded, circling helplessly in a “outcasts” of the 1960s, the hippies, boat whose controls he cannot for whom Penn felt great affection reach. (The boat, rather too and admiration. His gentlest film, “it nudgingly, is called the Point of exposes with the most rigorous View). “At the end of Night clarity,” wrote Robin Wood, “—the Moves,” as Michael Walker wrote, truest sort of clarity, born out of “there is only futility and despair”; sympathetic insight, not distaste—the essential weaknesses and Terence Butler called it “arguably Penn’s best movie,” adding inadequacies of the hippy movement.”...Penn received his third that “each event in Night Moves reverberates with the characters’ Oscar nomination for Alice’s Restaurant. The Vietnam war, a secret longings….Penn achieves so full a synthesis of his constant shadow over the film’s protagonists. also haunted his themes...that it was hard to imagine how he could follow it.” next picture, this time disguised by historical analogy. Little Big He did so, with unusual promptness, less than a year Man (1970), adapted by from Thomas later, returning for the third time to the Western genre. The Berger’s novel, presents a demythologizing—or perhaps Missouri Breaks (1976), described by Joel Zuker as “a slow and remythologizing—view of the American West, in which the graceful dance of death,” concerns the clash between ranchers are the good guys, and the whites (especially General and rustlers in 1880’s . Elegantly and quirkishly scripted Custer) are the bad guys….Robert Kolker saw the film as acting by Thomas McGuane, it seemed to Richard Combs that the film “to undo the conventions of the Western by exposing them as “piles on detail and eccentric doodles of character,” and makes pompous frauds and inhuman gestures...showing the West as its points...through ironic layers of mood, lyricism and realism merely another arena for the establishment of personal and used just where they are least expected.”… Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—8

Penn has always enjoyed a reputation as a director of can do serious, realistic things, but on Broadway...it’s all just actors, establishing a close, sympathetic relationship with his entertainment.” Not that there is the least lack of emotion (or, players and eliciting exceptionally fine performances. He come to that, of entertainment) in Penn’s films. “A movie,” he describes his methods, learned from once remarked, “is really an act of Elia Kazan, as “half improvisation, half passion.”… control.” On The Missouri Breaks, “Underlying each Penn though, control was rumored to be movie,” wrote Michael Walker lacking, with the film’s superstars, (Movie, Spring 1976), “is a meditation and , on/investigation of aspects of the pursuing their own individual USA, is history, people and myths.” conceptions.… Penn was disappointed with the film, feeling that it suffered From Arthur Hiller Penn obituary from insufficient preparation and “a in September 29, 2010 compromise with Hollywood.” Both Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks From his 1981 movie Four Friends were commercial failures, and Penn onwards, his film career began to “made a private determination not to do falter. Target (1985), another film for money.” In the event (1987), and Penn and Teller Get he made no films at all for five years, Killed (1989), starring the successful returning to Broadway...His next film American magicians, suffered from was to have been Altered States, mediocre scripts which clearly failed adapted by Paddy Chayevsky from his to ignite Penn’s talents. He directed own novel. However, Penn and the television film Inside (1998), Chayevsky (who had known each other which dealt with the anti-apartheid since army days) were unable to agree struggle in South Africa, and in 2000 on their overall approach to the picture, became an executive producer on Law and Penn resigned amicably three and Order, some episodes of which weeks before shooting was due to start. Jason Munn, "Rolling Roads," 2011 his son Matthew directed. In 2002, Another long-cherished project, a film on the Attica prison riots, after a break of some 20 years, he returned to the New York ran into cost problems. Instead, Penn reverted for his next film to stage to direct Alan Bates in Fortune’s Fool, an adaptation of his favorite decade. Ivan Turgenev’s A Poor Gentleman, for which Bates won a “I think the 60s generation was a state of mind and it’s Tony. really the one I’ve been in since I was born,” Penn says. Four Friends (1981), based on a partly autobiographical script by Penn’s unrealized projects included an adaptation of George , is concerned with “curiosity and exploration about Orwell’s Burmese Days; a film on the Attica in New who we are and where we ware.”...The notable events of the York; and The Last Cowboy dealing with the takeover of the 1960s impinge marginally on the plot, mirrored rather than ranges by big business agriculture. In his latter years he shown…. Rich, allusive and visually superb—it was the last maintained relationships with the actors Studio and the Berkshire work of Ghislain Cloquet, the Belgian cinematographer who also theatre in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In 2007 he attended the worked on Mickey One—Four Friends seems to suggest a Berlin film festival. Which programmed a special tribute to his mellowing of Penn’s pessimistic outlook; he film’s ending is work. cautiously happy, even serene. Penn’s...film Target (1985), deals with a father-son In 1955 he married the actor Peggy Maurer. She survives him, relationship that begins routinely in Dallas before eventuating in along with Matthew, a daughter, Molly, and four grandchildren. bloodletting and foreign intrigue in Europe…. Irving Penn died in 2009. Throughout his career, Arthur Penn has consistently maintained a dual allegiance—to the cinema and to the theatre— Arthur Hiller Penn, film, theatre and television director, born 27 rare among major movie directors. Theatre, it would seem, September 1922; died 28 September 2010 attracts him emotionally—“a very warm, close, familial phenomenon” while cinema exerts a more intellectual From Arthur Penn Interviews. Edited by Michael Chaiken fascination. “Film offers the opportunity for constant and Paul Cronin. University of Mississippe Press, Jackson, contradiction between what is said and what is done,” he has 2008. remarked. “Film is how one looks, as against what one says. On the stage, you can’t document that. You’re too far back. So what “Bonnie and Clyde Is Like A War Film” Patrick Bureau / 1968 one says is what one is.” Furthermore, he argues that the mantle of intellectual respectability has passed to the cinema: “There Penn: For years in America we’ve stumbled from one war into was a time when, if you were working in the theatre as a another. It’s never-ending. American history is full of the ‘serious’ artist, and you went off to Hollywood, you were violence that everyone is talking about, and this permanent state prostituting yourself, but now it’s the opposite. In the cinema you of war we’re in makes this point even more evident. Every so- Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—9 called civilized country has gone through this same process. In song from Gold Diggers of 1933. C.W. is in the bathtub and America, the settling of the West and the war against the Indians Bonnie is smoking a cigarette. As she walks past the tub she was absolutely savage. I think we’ve come to terms with this by throws her cigarette in and he jumps up. It was meant to be a establishing a very moralistic culture. It's not violence that joke, but afterwards comes the love scene in the bedroom and the frightens us, it’s the moralists. If this violence is one of the things two scenes just didn’t work together…. I feel deep down, it’s because this is a peculiarly American problem. My next film will be a Western, a history of the native W: What about the question of homosexuality between Indians and what happened to them a century ago. All the Clyde and C. W. Moss? Indians, gangsters, and murderers are quite colorful, aren’t they? P: That was in the original script but it didn’t interest me. I I want people to feel disgust, to experience horror when they see asked the writers not to develop the idea and they didn’t. Instead all this death around them, just as I do. I’d like to think that it’s C.W. is shown as being completely innocent as though he were a all quite absurd, that we’re much more sensible than this. little kid, which is a very different idea all together. I would I saw Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers in New York. imagine that had this been a ménage à trios situation, which is It's a great film and shows that when faced with war we’re actually a very complicated and sophisticated relationship, they capable of doing terrible things. Bonnie and Clyde is like a war would never have robbed any banks. It’s too psychologically film. It's set in the same era as The Grapes of Wrath, during the difficult. These are simple people. brutal Depression of 1932 that had far-reaching effects on the entire W: But in The Left- country. It’s a painful period when Handed Gun… many Americans lost everything. P: Sure, there’s Southwest Texas, where we shot the something between Hatfield film, was very badly affected. In and the three boys, but not in Bonnie and Clyde society has Bonnie and Clyde. There is inflicted economic, social, and nothing voluntarily moral humiliation upon the homosexual, but do we ever individual. So what do Bonnie and really know? There’s always Clyde do? They wage war against something complicated about a this onslaught in order to find their friendship forged in the face of identities. They represent the death. You can see this in the popular front of individual army where there’s nothing liberation. I wouldn’t want to really homosexual about your psychoanalyze the entire United friendship with your buddies, States but there is certainly a It's not homosexuality in a sociological aspect to the physical sense even if it’s the Depression. I want to show how these two people emerged from most intimate bond two people of the same sex can share. this environment. I’m not saying they’re right or wrong. I just wanted to tell their story from start to finish, when the police W: Like when C.W. plays chess with Buck and Clyde, and caught up with them and shot them dead with a hail of bullets. Bonnie is saying to Clyde, “Hurry up and come with me”? “I wanted the film to develop on different levels, from a social P: It’s more that Clyde’s love for his gang and his life with point of view and even a political one, and I wanted this to be these men means more to him than his love for Bonnie. Of done through its macabre humor. There’s real irony when a course behind all of this there is also the embarrassing problem democratic society moves against two people. I think the film’s of his impotence, which is why he would rather hang out with the success—especially with young Americans—stems from the fact boys. that they see it as a return to anarchy, or more importantly, as being antiwar. W: You seem to like simple characters. For example neither Billy the Kid nor Clyde can read. “Arthur Penn in Paris” Renaud Walter / 1968 P: I don’t know why but I think exploring a period is more W: Why did you begin Bonnie and Clyde with Faye interesting through the eyes of ordinary people. Truly Dunaway naked? exceptional people don’t belong to any particular era…. P: To show that Bonnie is available, waiting for someone to fall for her and take her out of there. It was a quick and W: How do you explain C.W. Moss’s actions at the end of elliptical way of showing this without having to go on about it the film when he looks through the window but doesn’t do later. The basic idea is that she’s all alone, wondering what will anything to save them? become of her and how terrible life is. She goes to the window P: What I had in mind was for him to put his faith and and sees Clyde. It serves as a good romantic introduction to the beliefs to the test. He’s genuinely naïve and looked upon Bonnie story. and Clyde as gods. He really believed that no one could ever catch the two of them, and so by looking through the window it’s W: There is one scene you cut, the one in the bathroom. almost as if he wants to witness a miracle. When he sees them P: Yes, the short scene between Bopnnie and C.W. Moss. leaving he’s thinking “Ah! I was right! I knew they could do it.” Bonnie puts on a necklace and sings “We’re in the Money,” the His father takes advantage of this naivety when he sets up the Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—10 ambush. It's a kind of simple-minded religious experience for it’s placed in continuity in the finished film. Of course the other him…. reason why I shoot a lot of film is that I like actors. I like pushing them as far as they can go…. W: In The Left Handed Gun, The Miracle Worker, and Bonnie and Clyde the same theme emerges, that of moving from Robert Hughes / 1970 reality to legend, like the beautiful sequence when Bonnie reads Penn: I would be the last person to suggest that I wasn’t her poem. reordering history in order to fit my needs in telling my version P: I’ve always been interested in this idea of looking of Bonnie and Clyde’s story. I couldn’t claim historical accuracy beyond the legend. It’s not only living legends that interest me for the film for a second any more than I would for Little Big but also those from our recent past. Just look at how many novels Man or The Left Handed Gun. You use history and social and plays are based on legends. … situations for insight, and also to say, “This is the way I understand the background and foreground of a given situation W: Tell us about the scene when Bonnie and Clyde are dramatically. These people worked against this kind of climate killed. socially, economically, historically, and so forth. Bonnie and P: I wanted to manipulate time and space in the scene. I Clyde were killers, but I think they were killers with an intention. wanted it to slow down as the blood started to flow. We had four They weren’t Robin Hoods by any means, they didn’t have those cameras, each one shooting at a different speed. We did four kinds of redeeming features. But they did have the redeeming takes using different speeds, different lenses, and different feature of calling attention to the fact that the repository for the angles. We ended up with so much good footage that we could funds of the time were local banks, and the banks were somehow have made an entire film of the caught up in that inexorable drive massacre alone…. of economic history that caused them to foreclose on the very W: In France some people farms that were keeping the banks have accused the film of being an alive, and of course many of the incitement to violence. banks failed. There was an P: I don’t think Bonnie and economic surfeit going on there Clyde is that violent. I took my that was absurd, and I think twelve-year-old son to see it and Bonnie and Clyde attacked the he thought it was boring. absurdity of their time. I think they Violence itself doesn’t interest were unknowing me. It’s easy to blame cinema for revolutionaries…. the violence around us. I’ve seen Violence and Sex lots of horror films but they’ve Eliminating violence from film never made me go out and kill would be like eliminating one of someone. Why not blame the primary colors from a palate, literature, our parents, even particularly in this era when ourselves? People condemn films nuclear weapons are poised and but perhaps it’s cinema that ready. When we talk of one condemns society. missile system knocking out another missile system, we’re escalating—in common parlance—to the level of insanity. To American Film Institute / 1970 say that film is too savage seems to me to be self-delusion at a Penn: Let me say something about coverage. I shoot an awful very deep level. I don’t do it for sensational reasons, and I don’t lot of film. I like to do the master shot then cover it from all think I’m particularly guilty of the accusation of gratuitous angles. Shooting over-the-shoulders, individuals, medium close- violence. ups all gives me an awful lot of material to work with. All you There is a certain character of killing and violence in have to deal with is the lab bill. We were shooting a scene and I Bonnie and Clyde, but also a kind of sexuality that I think is realized there was a moment where the dramatic tension was meaningful. We were trying to touch on the idea that sexual going soft. I felt if I didn’t get some kind of coverage I wouldn’t relations between two people on screen aren’t always blissful and be able to control the speed and rhythm of the scene, so I shot it sometimes don’t even really exist. Clyde is so hurt when she with an individual of Warren, an individual of Faye, and a tight talks about their lack of love-making. It seems to me that this is close-up on each. This gave me an opportunity to alter the tempo. one of the ways that his personality is confirmed to him. It’s the It’s always important to have a safety valve, something that can private knowledge Bonnie has of him that bonds him to her. get you out of a situation. On a given day you arrive on the set They become inextricably connected not because they are with a certain rhythm in mind, one you feel is right for the first adventurers so much as because their identities are so closely scene of the film. But the thing is that you rarely shoot in interwoven that they can’t separate. By this time they have sequence, and if you don’t provide yourself with material that become a single identity. can enable you to expand or condense time and change the I think of the sexual life as being very symbolic of the rhythm, you’ll be obligated to cut the film to the rhythm you felt internal life. The sexual experience of the characters in my films that particular day. The point is that the atmosphere on a is an extension of other experiences of their life. If there is particular day on the set might not be right for the scene when anxiety and wild aggression in other aspects of their life, then it’s Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—11 going to appear in their sexual life too, in their capacity either to have unfolded very differently. It was important to convince the consummate it—or in the case of Clyde—inability to audience that Clyde became a killer unintentionally. consummate it. It just seems to me something which one includes, as much as you include the way someone dresses or L: Do you think the film would have been harsher and walks or talks. The way rougher in black and white? someone behaves sexually is a Color seems to give it a dreamlike part of the lexicon of that quality and romantic softness. character. P: If we’d gone for black and white, it would have André Leroux / 1983 been a completely different film. L: Bonnie and Clyde Everything would’ve had to have gives the impression that the been more historically accurate: characters lived in the sixties. the little details, the costumes, Of course we can’t ignore the even the landscape. The film historical facts of the era, but would have been more like a it looks like your documentary and less romantic. reconstruction of the thirties isn’t absolutely accurate. The L: Sex and love are brought costumes, for example, together at the end of the film in wouldn’t look out of place in an explosion of slow-motion the sixties. violence. Their deaths have an incredible sensual and sexual P: When we were working on the film, the studio asked if energy to them as their bodies writhe about in a kind of orgasmic we wanted to shoot in black and white. The producer Warren delirium. The lovers are united in death. Beatty, the screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman, and P: It’s at this moment then reality becomes legend, and I all discussed this possibility, but finally decided that color Bonnie and Clyde are transformed into mythic heroes. On the would be best. I felt color would give the film a contemporary brink of death they knowingly look at each other with loving feel. I also felt it was important that the film speaks more for the tenderness. They know it’s all over. sixties than the thirties. The costumes we chose are a good example of that. L: Perhaps the transition from reality to legend happens L: I think that earlier when the sheriff reads audiences instinctively Bonnie’s poem, which is then understood this blown away in the wind after metaphoric aspect of she and Clyde have made love the film. They in the field. sympathized with P: Yes, this is where the these two criminals legend takes hold in the story, who—just like the but I wanted Bonnie and Clyde young people of the to become legends even beyond sixties—defied the reality of the film. Their authority. Were you deaths propel the legend beyond concerned that reality, and this is why I shot the audiences identified scenes in slow motion. The with Bonnie and rhythm of the death sequence Clyde? was established by a combination of six different speeds of film. P: Absolutely not. For me, Bonnie and Clyde weren’t real During editing we cut a piece of film shot at one speed with killers. They were just children living in an era suffering from another piece shot at a different speed, for example from forty- severe socioeconomic crisis, one that fomented their frenzied eight frames per second to ninety-six frames per second. All urges and led to murder. I didn’t want to make killing their main these very short cuts created this effect of spasmodic violence objective or even their primary mechanism for doing thing. This and lent a romantic texture to their deaths. We spent three days is why Clyde is so angry with C.W. Moss after the first bank filming the death scene. During the shoot in Texas people came robbery. Out of sheer panic, rather than some kind of from all over explaining that years ago their parents had met premeditated criminal act, Clyde shoots a bank employee Bonnie and Clyde. One woman even brought a piece of cloth hanging on to the car during their escape. Afterwards Bonnie, from a dress that allegedly belonged to Bonnie. She told me that Clyde and C. W. hide out in a movie theater, and Clyde punches her mother had even made the dress that Bonnie wore at her a seat because he’s so angry at what happened. He’s furious at wedding. That whole part of the country is steeped in the legend C.W. whose clumsiness and thoughtlessness led to the shooting. of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. It’s where Robert Benton If only he’d parked the car closer to the entrance of the bank and David Newman both grew up, and they knew everything Clyde wouldn’t have had to use his gun, and events would surely there is to know about Bonnie and Clyde….

Penn—BONNIE AND CLYDE—12

L: You have made several films in color and others in she has discarded realize pretty quickly that her initial decision black and white. What are the differences between the two? was the right one. Often I’d like the chosen take to be better, but P: It's important to ensure that the color of a film doesn’t this has no reflection whatsoever on Dede’s work. She’s bury it under a wave of prettiness and make it look too artificial. someone who’s completely committed to her job, jumping Color makes audiences feel detached, apathetic, and, in turn, headlong into the material. Sometimes I’m satisfied with the uninvolved. Black and white is closer to reality. Though I’m not editing on a sequence, but she isn’t, so she sends me home and exactly sure why. Maybe it’s because of its chromatic tells me to come back tomorrow. She’ll work all night, and by characteristic, maybe it’s just my personal view. For filmmakers the next day, she’s nailed it. of my generation black and white is connected to writing and printing, to newspapers and current events. It has a kind of Richard Schickel / 1990 aggressive quality and an almost-documentary-like veracity. S: Finally, can you characterize what a director is, what Color, on the other hand, inevitably softens reality by getting rid he does? of brutality. It’s really strange. … P: There are so many layers to being a director. There is the simple cohesive force that holds together the idea of the film L: [Dede Allen, your favorite editor] edited Bonnie and and sees that it is represented in all its parts, so that finally it Clyde, Alice’s Restaurant, Little Big Man, Night Moves and The becomes an ideational whole. That’s one level. There are other Missouri Breaks. What does she bring to your films? levels, one of which is to be an instigator of certain trouble. You P: It’s difficult to explain what Dede does because she’s so set one actor against the other in a benign environment, but you much more than just an editor. She’s an artist who’s an say, “Act out in an infantile way. Give voice to those rather absolutely essential part of the creative process. After filming primitive forces and I will maintain the atmosphere.” You need I’m always completely exhausted and wonder whether what I to fend off conventional behavior and any orthodoxies. You have in my hands is any good. It’s at this moment that Dede, suggest and invite and elicit and solicit every kind of behavior solid as a rock, enters the scene. She looks at all the footage, sets you possibly can that doesn’t follow conventional forms. Finally, about clearing the decks, and finds the best way to start editing. there is a personal aesthetic that goes with all good directors. It’s at this point that her help is most appreciated She’ll put There is a consistency of thought and approach, of visualization. together a very careful first assembly and unlike most other There is no question about it. It’s a rather mystical area, one that editors is able to give some real coherence to the footage. After while I’m doing it I’m not aware of. It’s only after I have filming ends, I always slip away for a couple of weeks to rest. conversations like this or I see a body of my work or somebody The first thing I do when I get back is look at what Dede has else’s work where I can say, “I know that’s a Kazan film, that’s a done, by which point she’s already given some shape to the film. Fred Zinneman film, I can tell a or Then we work together until it’s finished. Unlike the people who film.” It’s clear that there’s an abiding sensibility. It goes back to edited The Left Handed Gun and The Chase, two films I didn’t our discussion about that apparently contradictory sensibility of edit, Dede always chooses the best takes. We share similar tastes being able to organize accidental, irreverent, disparate and in acting, we’re always on the same wavelength. Occasionally I fragmented behavior in a highly technical sense. tell her she hasn’t picked the best take but after looking at what

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIII:

October 18 Marketa Lazarová, František Vláčil (1967) October 25 The Last Wave, (1977) vember 1 True Confessions, Ulu Grosbard (1981) November 8 Chunking Express/Chung Hing sam lam, Wong Kar-Wei (1994) November 15 Richard III, Richard Loncraine (1995) November 22 Frida, Julie Taymor (2002) November 29 Revanche, Götz Spielmann (2008) December 6 My Fair Lady, (1964)

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected] …email Bruce Jackson [email protected] ….for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send either of us an email with add to BFS list in the subject line.

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo With support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News