Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

No one could have predicted…

Let’s finish the job.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

T R E 4 5 O N

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Bonnie Parker et Clyde Barrow

Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    eastriver

    Arthur said some very nice things about something I wrote years ago. He was an icon. (With very good taste, it turns out.)

  2. 2.

    J

    Though it does not perhaps belong on the list of movies which break new ground in the way some of Arthur Penn’s other films did, The Miracle Worker, which is an adaptation of the play he directed on Broadway, is among the most intensely felt, fully realized and deeply moving pieces of cinema there ever was.

    He shall be missed.

  4. 4.

    Gus

    I saw Little Big Man in my late teens or early twenties and thought it was brilliant. Revisited in my early thirties, and thought it was okay. Still love Bonnie and Clyde, though, especially Gene Hackman’s performance.

  5. 5.

    trollhattan

    I was too young to see “Bonnie and Clyde” when it came out so by the time I saw it, it had a huge reputation to live up to. I still liked it, but wasn’t floored by it.

    “Little Big Man” is pretty messy but has enough great scenes–very quotable–that I’ll rewatch it whenever I come across it. “The Missouri Breaks”–now there’s one bizarre western.

    RIP, Mr. Penn.

  6. 6.

    Linda Featheringill

    When Bonnie and Clyde came out, it was an extraordinary movie, given the era. You, of course, were teeny tiny, if you existed at all.

    In later years, I have seen it again and it was okay but not as grand as it was originally.

    The most amazing thing about the movie was the orgy of gunfire at the last. The overkill was shocking.

    Unfortunately, we are not shocked by that any more.

  7. 7.

    Napoleon

    I didn’t love . . . Little Big Man

    WHAT?

    That is the best movie of all time. Doug I am profoundly disappointed in you.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    For some reason, I never realized that Arthur Penn was the brother of the great portrait photographer Irving Penn. What an outrageously gifted family.

    And yes to @J: about The Miracle Worker. Outstanding film.

  11. 11.

    Martin

    Heh. I just shot away all of the ads and then wiped out a couple of the comments. Better than the pie filter.

    Bonus! I just got an error trying to submit this because I accidentally shot away the Name and Mail fields.

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    I find early ‘70s American movies fascinating, so many interesting influences converging at once—television, French New Wave, ‘60s Americana. I didn’t love Bonnie and Clyde or Little Big Man as much as some people did, but I’ve always wanted to see Mickey One.

    Bonnie and Clyde was released in August 1967, a wild year for movies. Critics were split on the film, and its reception probably intensified the split between an older, more genteel, used-up generation of film critics, and a new generation of critics (and film makers). You also had a rising crop of filmmakers who had made their bones in television and were not stretching out on a bigger cinematic canvas.

    Other films from the seminal year 1967: Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Dirty Dozen, In the Heat of the Night, Blow Up, Belle du Jour, and the US release of A Fistful of Dollars.

  16. 16.

    debbie

    I rewatched Bonnie and Clyde over the summer, and I’d forgotten just how good Gene Hackman is in it (as he is in everything he’s done). As used as I am to gun violence, I still think the movie’s end was overdone.

  25. 25.

    Joe Beese

    Mickey One is an interesting oddity. But after B&C, the key Penn film is Night Moves – which may the single most underrated film of the 70s.

    RIP

  26. 26.

    Dennis SGMM

    @stuckinred:

    Yep. As for slow motion, if my memories of being shot at with automatic weapons are still correct, everything does happen in slow motion – particularly getting your head down.

  31. 31.

    Raenelle

    How in Sam Hill could anyone not love “Bonnie and Clyde.” That is almost as incomprehensible as James O’Keefe believing he could seduce Abbie Boudreau.

  33. 33.

    Alice Blue

    Loved Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 and I still do.

    The most unreal thing about it is the casting of Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Not that they didn’t do a great job, but the real Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow looked nothing remotely like them (and that’s putting it mildly).

  34. 34.

    Tokyokie

    @Joe Beese:

    I agree. Night Moves is the anti-noir noir movie. When I first saw it, it was at a sneak preview and I missed the first couple of minutes, and I didn’t know for several months whether it was Night Moves or Knight Moves.

  35. 35.

    Batocchio

    Bonnie and Clyde is a fantastic film and an American classic. It did great box office but many critics didn’t like it when it came out, but with the passage of time they reassessed it and recognized its influence. Penn made some other great films, too, and had a facility for moving from drama to comedy and back again in the same film (or even the same scene). My sound teacher worked on Little Big Man and used to show a great clip from that flick. IIRC, he said Penn was a decent guy.

  36. 36.

    debbie

    Accounts at the time said that 130 rounds struck the car with Bonnie and Clyde catching 25 each.

    Interesting picture which proves the inaccuracy of the movie. In the movie, it seemed to me like they each caught more than 100 bullets. Plus the car door was open the entire time.

  38. 38.

    jake the snake

    Surprised no one has mentioned “The Left-Handed Gun”.
    Far from the best Billy the Kid movie or Penn’s best, but still an interesting movie with a solid performance by Paul Newman.

    Night Moves is indeed one of Penn’s best. And don’t forget
    a jb Melanie Griffith skinny-dipping.

  39. 39.

    Batocchio

    Jake, apparently Penn didn’t like how the studio re-edited Left-Handed Gun, although that doesn’t mean that the performance and individual scenes weren’t good. (BTW, apparently Billy the Kid wasn’t left-handed, but a photo got flipped accidentally and that’s how the legend started.)

Comments are closed.