Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

 Upgraded "Bonnie and Clyde" looks terrific in both Blu-ray and DVD editions
"This here's Miss Bonnie Parker. I'm Clyde Barrow. We rob banks"-Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) "I ain't no lover boy"- Beatty as Clyde Barrow to Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway).

"Bonnie and Clyde" looks better than a depression era robber baron in his finest clothes. The colors pop and while the images are a bit soft at times (due to the aging of the source materials), Warner has done a stellar job of cleaning up the film making a marked improvement over the previous DVD bare bones release from over a decade ago. Packed with some extra cool extras including a multi-part documentary on the making of the film, a documentary licensed from The History Channel on the real "Bonnie and Clyde", deleted scenes (sadly without dialogue because the soundtrack is missing)and wardrobe tests, this is one of the best jobs I've seen of a 60's classic reissued on DVD and Blu-ray.

He might not have been a "lover boy" but Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow sure is pretty to look at on screen. Playing with his image as a pin-up, Beatty and the beautiful Faye Dunaway pull off their roles as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" despite their Hollywood looks. Penn has always been an adventurous filmmaker and his work with Beatty in "Mickey One" paid off with a solid, nuanced performance from Betty where others might have let the actor get away with a less thoughtful interpretation of the role. With "Bonnie and Clyde" Penn and Beatty (producer on the project) demonstrate a keen awareness of the French New Wave (originally director Francios Truffaut was approached to direct and its rumored that Jean Luc-Goddard the infant terrible of the New Wave movement was asked as well but his changes were so radical that he was rejected as a director for the film. Truffaut's most telling influence the elimination of Clyde Barrow's bisexuality in favor of making him impotent a choice that Penn also argued for when Beatty thought about going back to the original script by David Newman and Robert Benton) which influenced some of Penn's unusual visual choices for the film. The first time we meet Bonnie Parker we see only isolated close ups of her face as she puts on her make up and Penn gradually reveals the room as something less than the elegance that we might have expected from a Hollywood thriller like "Bonnie and Clyde". "Bonnie and Clyde" is notable for a shift with much more gruesome, violent sequences that Hollywood had seen before; in fact Penn claims that the sequence where Clyde shoots the manager of a bank in the face as he tries to stop their car was the very first time that a Hollywood film showed the shooter and the victim all in the same single shot. If that is so, it's a startling change that influenced the rest of Hollywood for good and bad over the course of the next forty some years.

Penn, Beatty, screenwriters Benton & Newman (and an uncredited Robert Towne who receives a "creative consultant" credit since he couldn't claim a writing credit for his work) do take some liberties with the story of bank robbers Barrow and Parker but in the interest of the drama those liberties work creating a film that examines the characters and the world of foreclosed mortgages, depression era poor people and the wealthy who just kept getting wealthier in fine detail. Featuring stellar support from actors Gene Hackman as Clyde's brother, Gene Wilder (in his film debut), Michael J. Pollard and Estelle Parsons, "Bonnie and Clyde" has aged gracefully. Penn's brilliant visual motifs stand up surprisingly well. They draw attention to the characters and saying as much with as little dialogue as possible. Even where the facts are skirted (such as the fact that Bonnie Parker was badly burned and had to be carried most places by Clyde Barrow after a car accident), there's a logical dramatic reason for doing so.

The Blu-ray looks stunning as well but fans should be aware of the age of the film as this doesn't look quite as stunning as a more contemporary film might. Nevertheless, my jaw dropped as I haven't seen a print look THIS good even when I worked at the UCLA archives or sat through the film for the first time in one of Howard Suber's classes on film genres.

Audio sounds quite good but, again, keep in mind the original soundtrack was recorded, mixed and mastered in mono as that was the standard when this film played in theaters. Interestingly enough, fans will probably hear a better sounding version here on the DVD than when it played in theaters. Warner had so little faith in the film that it was released to drive-in's and second tier theaters initially (they also offered Beatty nearly half of the domestic gross as his fee figuring the film wouldn't make a huge amount of money. Someone at Warner probably paid with their job for such a miscalculation).

This deluxe two disc edition treats this classic with the respect it deserves; special features producer Laurent Bouzereau was called in to create the featurettes for the two disc edition demonstrating how much love Warner was willing to give the film. Bouzereau does his usual top notch job here.

"Revolution: The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'" is a three part documentary that covers everything from the fights that director Penn had with his cinematographer for his unusual stylistic choices to the checkered history of the film's production.

"Love and Death: The Story of Bonnie and Clyde" has been licensed from the History Channel and gives fans of the film the REAL story of the couple which is a nice contrast to the reel one were given by Penn and Beatty.

Also included are two deleted scenes which I'm surprised have survived all this time. The clips are silent as the original audio recordings from the location have been lost but there are subtitles to give fans an idea of what is going on. ***

We also get to see Warren Beatty model clothes for us in the wardrobe tests.

One of Penn's finest films (along with "Night Moves", "The Miracle Worker" and his underrated oddity "The Missouri Breaks"), "Bonnie and Clyde" looks terrific in a remastered deluxe DVD edition. Fans will positively love the clean up job done on the video and while the audio doesn't sound much improved, it sounds as good as it's ever going to get. Highly recommended.
April 21, 2008

 Love the photogenic quality
the photo quality of this movies blows me away - it's superb!!! Of course it helps when you have two fine actors - great movie!!!!!!!! April 19, 2008

 Perhaps the penultimate edition...
This picture has long been a favorite of mine, so I was delighted to see it finally get its due with a special edition. But if you're going to bill yourself as the ULTIMATE edition, you had better get the package exactly right.

The art direction in the photo book is amateurish and annoying, but that wouldn't be enough to scratch a star off a review. What distressed me more is that the exit music, thoughtfully included after the final titles on the old release, is absent from this ultimate edition. Now why couldn't they have left that on there? Also, there was a terrific soundtrack album back in 1968 that actually had snippets of dialogue nicely blended with Charles Strouse's music (most of which admittedly never made it into the film). This soundtrack album has never been released on CD and its inclusion here would have gone a long way toward making this a truly ultimate edition. They included four Simon & Garfunkle tunes on a CD with the recent Graduate 40th anniversary edition, didn't they?

These nitpicks aside, it is a real nice transfer (almost but not quite too color-saturated) and a nice clean-up on the audio. If you're fond of this great film, be sure to get this set, because frankly, this is as close to ultimate as we're ever going to get. April 18, 2008

 Not a bad movie, but can we get a more authentic remake?
Some of the previous reviewers have already hit upon the historical errors, how Bonnie and Clyde met, Clyde killed outside the car, the real Bonnie being a rehead, the CW Moss composite character, the fact that they never met Hammer. One point I would like to bring up and that is that the movie failed to show Clyde's weapon of choice, the BAR or Browning Automatic Rifle. Clyde used it most of the time, as a Thompson machine gun fire couldn't penetrate a car like a BAR could. A BAR was also very loud and intimidating. Clyde even cut off part of the barrel and end stock so he could wield it with ease. Why the movie failed to show this was most likely a plain lack of research by the script writers.

The real story of Bonnie and Clyde should be the next blockbuster remake. April 10, 2008

 Landmark of American Cinema
1967 was a watershed year for American film. The Best Picture nominees were "Bonnie and Clyde", "In the Heat of the Night", "The Graduate", "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and..."Dr. Doolittle". "In Cold Blood" wasn't nominated. "Bonnie and Clyde" was unlike any film that came before and that may account for it's spotty reception upon initial release. Is the film a treatise on the nature of violence? Is it a commentary on misguided hero worship? Whatever, it's a damn good movie. "Bonnie and Clyde" may not have influenced Peckinpah but it sure anticipated him. Director Arthur Penn does a terrific job of evoking the Great Depression, a time when it would be perfectly understandable for the mass public to embrace anti-social misfits like the Barrow Gang. Warren Beatty projects aw-shucks geniality as Clyde, a man who knows how to handle a six-shooter but shoots blanks in the bedroom. Faye Dunaway is sensuous as Bonnie, a waitress who joins Clyde not so much for altruistic reasons but more for thrill seeking. Terrific supporting cast includes Gene Hackman as Clyde's along for the ride brother, Buck, Estelle Parsons as Buck's highstrung wife, Blanche, and Michael J. Pollard as the lazy gaited mechanic who relishes the opportunity to rub elbows with notoriety. "Bonnie and Clyde" hasn't dated one iota from 1967 and is definitely deserving of it's status in the American Film Pantheon. April 10, 2008

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