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They're Young, In Love, and They Kill Cops

posted 14 years ago by ecarle
3 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS

"They're young, they're in love...and they kill people" was the famous tagline for "Bonnie and Clyde."

The film is nothing if not landmark famous, and we're usually given a "you had to be there" context for the European film-inspired revolutionary fervor of the young audiences in America and in Europe who applauded the film.

And yet.

All these years later, I'll occasionally open the newspaper and there will be an article about a policeman(or policewoman) dying in the line of duty, and how police officers from all over the state and nation will come to the funeral, and how the cop's widow(er)and children are left all alone. And it is pretty sad. And pretty outrageous.

I mention this because I think that "Bonnie and Clyde" has not stood the test of time that, say, "The Wild Bunch" has stood.

And it might be because Bonnie and Clyde (and Hackman's Buck and goofy-looking Michael J. Pollard) kill cops all through the film. Not to mention the somewhat elderly-looking bank employee Clyde (accidentally on purpose) blasts through the face during the one robbery.

Even in 1967, I think that "Bonnie and Clyde" realized its "heroes" were anti-heroes, scary people (look at the tension invoked in the scene where they grab Sheriff Hamer, or how they "hijack" Gene Wilder and his fiance.) They're going down, and its hard going for Buck(wounded in the side of his head) and Bonnie and Clyde.

"The Wild Bunch" two years later was even more violent than "Bonnie and Clyde" but at least Peckinpah stipulated that the bounty hunters hunting the Bunch were all scum(less Robert Ryan's forced enlistee) and that the Bunch were pretty savage in killing bystanders and would voluntarily enter their final gunbattle to the death against heavy odds. There was some honor there, and the sense of matched sides of soldiers.

But Bonnie and Clyde was about folks who rob people(yeah, they let the farmer shoot the foreclosure sign, but still, they rob stores as well as banks) and kill cops.

They're just not that sympathetic anymore.

[–] Hancock_the_Superb 14 years ago

About a year ago three cops here in Pittsburgh were gunned down by some psychopath with an AK-47. We had thousands of cops from all over the continent (including Canada, and one or two cars from Mexico) show up for the funeral - I have some pictures of that on my Facebook page. It was really sad and moving.

I mention this because I think that "Bonnie and Clyde" has not stood the test of time that, say, "The Wild Bunch" has stood.

Absolutely right. Bonnie and Clyde is much more of its time than The Wild Bunch. It definitely panders to the radical chic crowd by making its protagonists misunderstood youngsters driven to crime by circumstance. Granted, this was a thematic preoccupation of Arthur Penn's - see The Left-Handed Gun and The Chase - but it definitely feels more like a '60s "radical" film than a true gangster movie.

The Wild Bunch makes its protagonists sympathetic but it doesn't glorify them - they're nasty people throughout most of the film, and Peckinpah doesn't try and play them as anything more than that. They have a sense of personal honor and loyalty to make them sympathetic but it doesn't excuse their actions. Not to mention the depth of character, story and thematic in Peckinpah's film are much greater than in Bonnie and Clyde.

After doing some research outside of the film, I don't like how they make Frank Hamer's motivation for tracking down Bonnie and Clyde simple revenge. I guess upholding the law wasn't a good enough motive.

Before anyone says anything, cops can indeed be pretty sleazy themselves, as I can well attest from my experiences during the G-20 last fall. But when they're facing off against trigger-happy psychopaths like Bonnie and Clyde, I'll give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.

"I am Mr. Shackelford's attorney, Rusty Shackelford, and my client pleads insanity."

[–] ecarle 14 years ago

I realize in making this post(and starting this thread), I'm opening B and C up to some "conservative moralizing" on my part, but that's not really my intent.

It is simply that I was watching it again the other night and the cop-killing was pretty constant and brutal. The movie DID seem to make the point that the cops were going to keep coming and coming and coming until B and C were dead; I don't think we were ever supposed to think that Bonnie and Clyde wouldn't pay for their crimes.

Still, that was then (the countercultural time) and this is now.

Recall that a year after Warners had a big hit in "Bonnie and Clyde," they had a big hit in "Bullitt," starring Steve McQueen as a SF police lieutenant.

With THAT movie, Warners had to advertise the film as being about a REBEL cop, "down with the hipsters."

There was real sensitivity about making cops heroes in that era.

[–] timlin-4 14 years ago

Modern gun restrictions and overwhelming police power do make the movie seem rather old-fashioned, but B&C were always unsympathetic. They are clearly portrayed as being pretty dumb, and there is little romance when they can't even have sex.

Cops aren't disliked less today, though they are probably thought of as less corrupt, but killing them ends up being pointlessly evil. The days of being able to escape a gun battle with police and go on with your life are done.