'Bonnie and Clyde' at 50: Ultraviolent gangster film changed American cinema (photos, videos)

[Machiavelli]

John Petkovic
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio)
August 13, 2017

They're young. They're in love. They kill people.

So proclaimed the trailer for "Bonnie and Clyde" when it hit the theaters in Aug. 1967.

On the surface, the tagline to Arthur Penn's groundbreaking gangster film about young lovers on the run from authority snugly fit into the Summer of Love. Well, at least two-thirds of it.

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[berdie]

Interesting article.

If you mentioned B & C to my FIL...he would erupt into a string of profanities that I sure can't type here. It really made him mad, since he lived thru those days, that they were being glamorized.

Myself, I still thought it was a well done movie even though I don't care for violence as a rule.

[Machiavelli]

Warren Beatty on 'Bonnie and Clyde' at 50

Jake Coyle
AP via ABC News
August 13, 2017

"Bonnie and Clyde" might have indelibly captured the spirit of the anti-authoritarian'60s with a pair of devil-may-care bank robbers from the '30s. But it didn't exactly roar into theaters when it opened 50 years ago.

The film, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the fatalistic outlaws, would become a cultural sensation, one of the biggest box office hits up until that point and a 10-time Oscar nominee. But on its initial release on August 13 in the midst of the Summer of Love, "Bonnie and Clyde" was virtually gunned down by bad reviews and a tepid reception at the box office.

"Sometimes you make a movie where everyone gets the joke immediately," said Warren Beatty in an interview looking back on "Bonnie and Clyde." ''And then you have a different situation with other movies."

"Bonnie and Clyde" returned to theaters Sunday to mark its 50th anniversary and it will again play nationwide on Wednesday as part of Fathom Events' TCM Big Screen Classics series.

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