Bonnie and Clyde - 1967 film review

I'm more than half a century late, which even by my standards is exceptionally tardy, but I've finally got round to watching Bonnie and Clyde, the highly successful movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway which (among other things) inspired a song by Georgie Fame. The director was Arthur Penn, whom I know best as director of a rather good crime film, Night Moves.

It was a historical film, set in 1934, and it's a tale of two outlaws. There are some similarities to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which came along soon afterwards, although the latter is more of a comedy, and has a superior soundtrack. Clyde Barrow (Beatty), recently released from prison, picks up an attractive young waitress (Dunaway), who is fascinated by his looks and his refusal to conform to society's norms.

Patricia Highsmith famously argued that such characters are dramatically interesting because they have a kind of freedom in the way they behave (I'm paraphrasing), and although I don't entirely buy into this argument, I can see its force. The trouble is that the likes of Bonnie and Clyde are essentially doomed figures. They are really not very bright, and neither is their hapless sidekick C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard). They also team up with Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons). The stellar cast also includes Gene Wilder.

It's a film that doesn't shy away from violence, and it was shocking in its day. Some saw it as glorifying violence, and historical accuracy certainly is not a strong point. But it was enormously successful and influential. I found it very watchable, and the relationship between the impotent Clyde and Bonnie is cleverly presented. Does it glorify violence? On balance, I'd argue that it doesn't, because you'd have to be very stupid indeed to see someone as brainless as Clyde as a role model. I suppose the counter-argument is that people with a propensity to violence are often very stupid, and crime should not be made to seem attractive. But you only have to consider what happens to the criminals in this film to see that there's nothing attractive about dying young and painfully. 

Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor was a successful 1975 thriller movie, which I saw when it first came out in my long ago student days. I enjoyed it very much at that time, and wondered how it would stand up to a second viewing in 2012, especially as the techno-thriller aspects of the story-line have inevitably been overtaken by time. The answer was that it remains very watchable indeed, a real credit to the excellent director, the late Sydney Pollack, many of whose films I've enjoyed.

The story is based on the debut novel of James Grady (someone I've never read); the book is called Six Days of the Condor. The cast is superb, with Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway as glamorous leads, and Max Von  Sydow as a suitably enigmatic assassin. John Houseman plays a minor part as a senior CIA man with his customary gusto.

The set-up is terrific. Redford is a nerdy researcher at a strange kind of library in New York, and just because he pops out of a basement exit to avoid the rain while getting a quick bite to eat, he is lucky enough to escape an attack by a group of gunmen who burst into his workplace and mow down everyone there. Within minutes, Redford is on the run. It turns out that he is in fact a researcher for the CIA. But one of his superiors seeks to lure him into a fatal trap. It seems he can trust no-one.

He therefore kidnaps Faye Dunaway in an attempt to get away - a very good choice of victim, not least because they fall for each other, and she helps him to fight back against those who are out to kill him. We move into fairly standard conspiracy thriller territory, but the pace is well maintained, and although I had some reservations about the later scenes,and the assassin's behaviour, the ending is pleasingly ambiguous.Good entertainment.

The Thomas Crown Affair

I’ve watched again the original (1968) version of The Thomas Crown Affair, and found that it remains enjoyable, even though it is very much a film of its time. The split screens and photographic trickery don’t entirely compensate for the thinness of the plot, but the success of the film derives mainly from the chemistry between the two leads, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.

McQueen is the eponymous Crown, a millionaire whose boredom leads him to organise a bank heist. Dunaway is an insurance investigator who is torn between fancying him and wanting to bring him to justice. This very charismatic couple make even playing a chess game seem like an exercise in seduction. And you can’t be sure whether Crown will get away with it, or not – or whether Dunaway will choose him rather than her career.

The film gains a great deal from the score written by the brilliant Michel Legrand. ‘His Eyes, Her Eyes’ is the theme for the chess game, and a good piece of music, but of course the highlight is the Oscar-winning ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’.

My friend Davide Bonori, whose tastes in music are very similar to my own, recently sent me a wonderful CD performed by Alan Bergman, who (with his wife Marilyn) wrote the lyric to the song. Bergman is in his 80s, but his version of ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ is quite superb, I think. A great lyric, and a performance I recommend. Listening to the song prompted me to revisit the movie, and I’m glad I did.