The Massacre of Bonnie and Clyde
By Thomas Mazzucco, with comment by James (Alec) Murphy
[1] Arthur Penn’s 1967 Hollywood blockbuster Bonnie and Clyde depicts the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as a criminal couple on the run during the Great Depression. The film introduced vivid and realistic violence and blood to Hollywood. The final scene is one of the most famous scenes of violence in both film and in history. Penn depicts the scene with great beauty in a grisly scenario as the lovers are cut down by a group of local law enforcement officers lying in wait. This scene shapes not only history as it brings an end to the reign of terror, but it also shapes the movie thematically.
[2] It was an easy decision to choose this final scene on which to focus, since it is the one that defines the movie and its importance to culture. While the scene with Bonnie and Clyde interacting with the family who lost their farm to foreclosure by the bank would have worked and been easily connected to the Great Depression, the final scene is more significant and offers a culmination to so many themes and the story itself. Each scene in Bonnie and Clyde keeps the viewer emotionally off balance, not knowing whether to expect comedy, romance, or violence. Penn artfully makes the viewer feel uneasy and challenges the system of American cinema by completely diverging from any Hollywood formula with his unique blend of comedy, romance, and action.
[3] The scene begins with Bonnie and Clyde driving quickly down a dirt road having a great time laughing and enjoying themselves one night after finally consummating their relationship. They see C.W. Moss’s father and his truck stopped along the side of the road waving them down. The couple stops the car and gets out to see what is happening with Moss and begin to realize something is not right when he talks to them for only a few seconds and then runs off. Bonnie and Clyde glance at each other and run back towards their stolen Ford V8 as Frank Hamer and the other sheriffs open fire, unleashing their automatic machine guns on the unsuspecting lovers.
[4] In the last scene, Penn incorporates all three of his blend of genres. Penn is able to keep some comedy in the final scene as Clyde drives down the road with a broken pair of sunglasses missing a lens, yet clearly the scene is about to turn violent. The violence and action occur when Bonnie and Clyde are gunned down. Amazingly, however, Penn is able to catch romance amongst the violence, for as the couple is riddled with bullets, they glance at each other and try to get to each other. Mixing these three elements is hard and not usually done successfully, yet Penn does so in a way that commemorates the love between Parker and Barrow, depicts an important historical event, and becomes one of the most famous cinema scenes of the 1960’s and possibly all of the 20th century.
[5] This final scene is the culmination of many themes and storylines in Penn’s film. By ending the lives of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as graphically and violently as he does, Penn brings a poetic justice to the film and an interestingly sense of romanticism too. He is able to accomplish this feat by altering history a bit, with the couple being gunned down outside their car rather than inside of it as happened on that fateful day in 1934.
[6] The ending is poetic in a sense since Bonnie and Clyde had killed so many people throughout the movie in such violent ways. Their victims had been ripped apart and cut down by the spray of bullets from their Thompson machineguns. Their victims were spattered with bullet holes and left bloody as the couple raced off in an escape from the law. However, the law catches up with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and Hamer and the other police officers cut them down the same way they had done their victims. The way they die thematically shows that actions will catch up to a person eventually and that what goes around comes around.
[7] From a filmic context, the scene is shot beautifully by Burnett Guffey, director of photography and cinematography. He artistically depicts the final moments of the lives of two of America’s most interesting figures from the 1930’s. Time Magazine calls the scene “cinematic perfectionâ€: “in what may be the most remarkable use of slow motion in cinema history, the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde writhe to earth in a quarter-time choreography of death.†Penn used new techniques and perfected old ones and used them in this final scene. (see comment by James (Alec) Murphy)
Comments
I think it is important to note here that, first, aside from Penn, there are many people whose talents should also be attributed to this final scene: François Truffaut, French Director, who did a great deal to tighten the message of, and give momentum to the movie; writers David Newman and Robert Benton, who wrote the initial treatment, and in the end, the final script for the play -- deliberately incorporating the comedic, romantic, and violent ending. Secondly, however, and on the contrary, it is important to note that many, including myself, consider this scene to be rushed, out of place, and a bizarre ending for such a thematically different movie. Yes, the scene is necessary and fairly historically accurate, but it doesn’t have to be the final note of the movie. As Pam Cook says , “When the film was first released, the sensational finale provoked negative responses from some critics. Forty or so years later, it remains emotive, partly because of its position in the narrative as the culmination of the pair’s death drive, overriding the key scene in which they successfully make love for the first time.†This is one of many reasons why I believe the scene should not be the finale of the movie. It’s my opinion that after this scene, like in the beginning of the movie, they should perhaps show true pictures of the loving couple, stressing instead their actuality as real, living human beings. Instead, this scene, shot in slow motion, gives the movie a storybook type of ending, not only taking away from the sexual climax of the movie, but from the legitimacy of it being true to life. If shot at regular speed, and if there was more real-life depictions of the couple after the scene, I believe it would hit home in a much more realistic way that would leave the viewer thinking about the couple as they actually were, rather than figures of a 1960s myth.
