Bonnie and Clyde is considered a landmark film, and is regarded as one of the first films of the New Hollywood era, since it broke many cinematic taboos and was popular with the younger generation. Its success prompted other filmmakers to be more open in presenting sex and violence in their films. The film’s ending also became iconic as “one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history.” It was among the first 100 films selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

The film was directed by Arthur Penn, and stars Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker. In the middle of the Great Depression, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker meet when Clyde triesto steal Bonnie’s mother’s car. Bonnie, who is bored by her job as a waitress, is intrigued with Clyde, and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime.

Bonnie and Clyde, because of the country’s economic depression, embarked on the road of robbery. From the beginning to the end, the director did not arrange for them to take the initiative to kill, but the violent and bloody scenes are indispensable. From Bonnie and Clyde’s continually robbing the banks, it can be seen that their most resentful ones are actually the capitalists who messed up the national economy and their personal life. The government’s powerlessness in the face of capital is even more in their hearts.

The film was intended as a romantic and comic version of the violent gangster films of the 1930s, updated with modern film making techniques. Arthur Penn portrayed some of the violent scenes with a comic tone, then shifted disconcertingly into horrific and graphic violence. The film was strongly influenced by the French New Wave directors, both in its rapid shifts of tone, and in its choppy editing, which is particularly noticeable in the film’s closing sequence. Director Arthur Penn also admitted that he had watched Breathless for dozens of times before filming Bonnie and Clyde.

Warner Bros.-Seven Arts had so little faith in the film that, in a then-unprecedented move, they offered its first-time producer Warren Beatty 40% of the gross instead of a minimal fee. The movie went on to gross over $70 million worldwide by 1973. Bonnie and Clyde was their most commercially successful movie since My Fair Lady.

The film was controversial on its original release for its supposed glorification of murders, and for its level of graphic violence, which was unprecedented at the time. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was so appalled that he began to campaign against the increasing brutality of American films. However,Roger Ebert gave Bonnie and Clyde a largely positive review, giving it four stars out of a possible four. He called the film “a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance.” More than 30 years later, he added the film to his “Great Movies” list. Some critics cite Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy, a 1950 film noir about a bank-robbing couple (also based loosely on the real Bonnie and Clyde), as a major influence on this film. Forty years after its premiere, Bonnie and Clyde has been cited as a major influence for such disparate films as The Wild Brunch, The God Father, and Natural Born Killers.

Through the decades, many cultural historians have analyzed Bonnie’s and Clyde’s enduring appeal to the public imagination. E.R.Milner, an historian, writer, ad expert on Bonnie and Clyde and their era, put the duo’s enduring appeal to the public, both during the Depression and continuing on through the decades, into historical and cultural perspective. To those people who, as Milner says, “consider themselves outsiders, or oppose the existing system,” Bonnie and Clyde represent the ultimate outsiders, revolting against and uncaring system. Milner explains in his book The Lives and Times of Bonnie and Clyde.

I am always considering that if a person encounters an economic crisis, and he has a gun and is resentful, is it romantic and brave to use his gun to express his anger? The answer in reality is definitely wrong, because expressing anger cannot be based on harm to others. But the movie is an art of achieving dreams. The fun of watching the “Bonnie and Clyde” is that you can enjoy the  pleasure of paying back.

Looking back at this film and the sentences left in that era is really amazing. As if the music is happy, Bonnie and Clyde are driving us in the T-car. Who are Bonnie and Clyde?  Perhaps, the youth who are fearless and running away on the road are just us.

“Someday they will go down together.

They’ll bury them side by side.

To few it’ll be grief.

To the law a relief.

But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.”