DVD Tuesday: Long Live the New Flesh in Cronenberg's Vidoedrome
DVD Tuesday: Videodrome, reality TV and the temple of the new flesh -- David Cronenberg saw it all!
All hail Mike Judge's Idiocracy(2006): Every time my mind is boggled by the depths to which some new reality TV show has sunk, I can't help but remember the most popular show of Judge's dystopian future: "Ow, My Balls!"
Really says it all, doesn't it?
But much though I'm amused by Idiocracy, David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) really blows my mind (pace Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Home, a Heartache"):. The first time I saw it I was in college, the product of a world in which there were no PCs, no cell phones, no IM, no PDAs, no social networking sites, no games more sophisticated than Space Invaders and Pong… and yet I knew that Videodrome wasn't just a freaky kick.
I'd been following Cronenberg since his experimental shorts Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970) and it was clear to me that he was on to something: In some visceral way, he got both the seductiveness and the lurking horror of a future in which we're all connected: We watch TV, TV watches us, the video signal merges with our brains and the new flesh is born from the cathode ray graveyard.
Videodrome has a permanent niche in my psyche, but I found myself thinking about it all over again when I reviewed Signal (2007), a short, sharp, shocking little parable about the pervasive power of, well, the signal -- the connection with a larger world of order and procedure and control. In the end it's little more than a gloss on George Romero's 1973 The Crazies, but that's not a criticism: People keep writing The Crazies (Eli Roth's upcoming adaptation of Stephen King's novel Cell is the newest) because it keeps speaking to us: How willing are we to surrender to groupthink and how ready are we to fight?
DVD Tuesday: Check into spooky hospital The Kingdom!
DVD Tuesday: Twin Peaks meets ER in The Kingdom -- check your preconceptions with the triage nurse!
So, I'm still getting over the horror that was Pathology, Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia's ill-advised foray into hospital horror. But I realized the perfect antidote was on my DVD shelf: Lars Von Trier's The Kingdom (1994).
Set in a vast, crumbling medical center built on a noxious swamp, Von Trier's haunted soap opera inspired Stephen King's short-lived Kingdom Hospital. But don't hold that against it: Everything Kingdom Hospital did wrong, The Kingdom does exactly right.
The huge cast of characters includes arrogant Swedish neurosurgeon Dr. Stig Helmer, newly arrived at the Kingdom with a stained professional reputation and a seethining hatred for all things Danish; would-be psychic Mrs. Drusse, who makes real contact for the first time in the hospital's elevator; junior Dr. Krogen, the go-to guy who secretly lives in the hospital's basement and supplies everything from medical equipment to pharmaceutical cocaine; staff chief Dr. Moesgaard, who tries to combat the Kingdom's bad karma with a cheery feel-good campaign; and Judith, whose unnatural pregnancy is intimately connected with the ghostly manifestations oozing out of the hospital's shadows.
The Kingdom glides effortlessly between black humor and bleak horror: The slowly emerging stories of Mrs. Drusse's little-girl ghost and the living child permanently damaged by Helmer's carelessness are equally haunting in entirely different ways. Moesgaard's clueless morale-building efforts wouldn't be out of place in The Office, and yes, there are hijinks involving body parts from the pathology lab.
I hope I've piqued your curiosity sufficiently that you won't be put off by the fact that it's in Danish and is more than four hours long (it was originally broadcast as a TV miniseries). Trust me: The 93-minute Pathology felt much, much longer. I couldn't wait for it to be over, and I was sorry to see The Kingdom end.
Things to Consider:
Dark Shadows pioneered the mix of soap opera/horror, and for a long time it was the only game in town.
Then Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Supernatual, New Amsterdam and others picked up the mentle. Do you like the mix of human drama and spooky stuff, or would you rather keep them apart?
How about humor and horror -- not spoofs, but movies like An American Werewolf in London that are both genuinely funny and genuinely horrifying?
Ask FlickChick: A Phantom of the Paradise remake and more movie questions
Ask FlickChick: Movies affected by the writer's strike, dubbed performances, what's that movie and more movie questions answered!
I'm a big fan of Brian De Palma's The Phantom of the Paradise. Recently, I've been hearing rumblings that there was talk of a remake. Any truth to these rumors? I can't really imagine a remake of this movie being successful, because part of the fun was how absolutely '70s it was. Thanks! – Kim
FlickChick: At this time, talk of a Phantom of the Paradise remake seems to be little more than that. The title is listed on the website of Pressman Films , at the bottom of a list of in-development projects.
That said, Pressman Films is a legitimate company, Edward R. Pressman has a strong track record as a producer and he's already backed a remake of Brian DePalma's Sisters (1973). Though the film hasn't opened in the US, it's got a great cast -- Stephen Rea, Chloe Sevigny and Lou Doillon, daughter of '60s icon Jane Birkin – and an interesting writer-director in Douglas Buck (2004's Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America).
Coincidentally, Variety announced today that Fox 2000 is remaking DePalma's 1978 The Fury. Hollywood's wholesale strip mining of the past continues!
Is it true that movie directors film the love scenes first in case the actors don't like each other as shooting goes on, or is every film different? -- Curious in Texas
FlickChick: No. In fact. most filmmakers try to schedule sex scenes for later in production, on the theory that it's easier for actors to simulate passion if they've had some time to work together and establish some kind of rapport.
And frankly, in the end it doesn't matter whether or not actors like each other: Mickey Rourke and Kim Basingerhated , but they're hot together in Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986). And there are plenty of examples of couples with zero onscreen chemistry – I'm sure my readers can think of many examples. I'll kick off with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – can you say "cold fish?"
When I was a kid I remember a movie where this woman in white was glowing and no matter what she touched it was glowing too do you know the name of the movie. Thanks -- Dave
FlickChick: I'm going with the ultra-low budget Terror from the Year 5000 (1958), which features Salome Jens in a glittery white jumpsuit as a time traveler from the radiation-blasted future.
The original Smokey and the Bandit was a childhood favorite of mine, but the sequel disappointed me so I never bothered to watch part three. I recently caught Smokey and the Bandit 3 in the middle of the night and had nightmares later – what a train wreck. Somebody at work said the third film was originally titled "Smokey Is the Bandit," but it had to be completely reworked when test audiences didn't understand that the Sheriff was also the Bandit. Do you know anything about this urban legend?
FlickChick: It's not an urban legend. "Smokey is the Bandit" was greenlighted on the strength of the first two films' box office, but neither director Hal Needham nor Burt Reynolds was interested in participating (though Reynolds eventually relented to the tune of a cameo appearance).
So the second sequel was built around Jackie Gleason's Sheriff Buford T. Justice. Someone clearly thought it would be really clever if the Bandit's nemesis accepted a bet involving some insane feat of high-speed driving with filthy rich Texans Big and Little Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick, Paul Williams), thereby making himself both a smokey (highway patrolman) and a bandit.
Apparently test audiences just didn't get the concept and after some disastrous screenings more than half the film was reshot, with Jerry Reed – the bandit's sidekick, Cledus Snow – assuming the bandit mantle. It was still a flop.
There's a small group of Smokey and the Bandit completists holding out hope that the original version of Smokey 3 will one day turn up, perhaps as a DVD extra on some special edition of Smokey and the Bandit--Part 3.
Ask FlickChick: Movies Delayed by the Writers' Strike and More!
Ask FlickChick: Movies affected by the writer's strike, dubbed performances, what's that movie and more movie questions answered!
Question: I was wondering what major films slated for this year were cancelled or delayed because of the writers strike? -- John Wao
FlickChick: Although TV shows were hit most badly because their schedules are so tight, movies didn't escape unscathed..
The biggest films delayed by the strike include:
Angels & Demons – Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code follow up, with Tom Hanks reprising the role of symbologist Robert Langdon, was the first film to fold. It's now due to star shooting this summer and has a May 2009 release date.
Justice League of America – George Miller's superhero picture looks as though it's dead in the water – cast members D.J. Cotrona (Superman), Armie Hammer (Batman), Anton Yelchin (Wally West/The Flash), Santiago Cabrera (Aquaman), Zoe Kazan (Iris), Megan Gale (Wonder Woman), Teresa Palmer (Talia al Ghul) and Common (Green Lantern) were all released from their contracts and it doesn't have a shooting date -- but it's officially on hold and does have a tentative 2009 release date.
Pinkville -- Oliver Stone's My Lai film, whose cast was supposed to include Bruce Willis, Woody Harrelson and Channing Tatum, is officially "on hold," but Stone is currently casting the Bush film W, which he co-wrote with Wall Street's Stanley Weiser and is scheduled to start shooting at the end of April 2008 in Louisiana.
Star Trek – J.J. Abrams' prequel about the early days of James Kirk and Mr. Spock, from their meeting at Starfleet Academy to their first space mission began shooting during the strike because it had a completed screenplay. But word is that it was moved from its original December 2008 release date to May 2009 because Abrams was unable to make script changes during production -- a common practice -- and wanted additional post-production time to polish what will undoubtedly be one of the most closely scrutinized films of the decade.
I saw an old horror movie – I think it was B&W, but I could be wrong – about some doctor who finds a fossil finger bone. When it gets water on it, it starts to grow skin. That's really all I can remember, but it really bugs me that I have no idea what the name was. Can you help? -- Sulie
I'm thinking The Creeping Flesh (1972), which featured one of the last pairings of UK horror legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. It's a pretty peculiar, Victorian-era tale that casts them as rival scientists and features a fossil skeleton that Cushing's character believes contains the essence of pure evil. It's in color, though; I saw it as a very young teenager on a double bill with [i]The Horror of Snape Island/Beyond the Fog (1972).
Question: In general, are all sequels always named and/or tied to the original? More specifically, are there movies that are unofficial sequels to other movies? A friend of mine said that Made with Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn was the unofficial sequel to Swingers. -- Mike
FlickChick: You're asking two different questions: Made (2001) isn't a sequel to Swingers (1996). It is a follow up that reunites Swingers stars Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, and they play similar characters. But Swingers' Mike Peters (Favreau) and Trent Walker (Vince Vaughn) just aren't Made's Bobby Ricigliano and Ricky Slade; I'd call Made a variation on a theme.
The second question, about titles, is less ambiguous. No, sequels aren't always named in a way that connects them directly to the original film, either via number (Friday the 13th Part IX...) or a character -- the Boston Blackie, Charlie Chan or Thin Man films, for example.
The first sequel to The Pink Panther (1964) was A Shot in the Dark (1964), the reasoning being that the "Pink Panther" wasn't a recurring character -- it was a fabulous jewel in danger of being stolen. But the producers learned their lesson, and all subsequent Inspector Clouseau films had the words "Pink Panther" in the title.
The sequel to Saturday Night Fever (1977) was Staying Alive (1985) -- Fever was heavy on the BeeGees' music and Staying Alive is a BeeGees song, but that's but a less than blindingly obvious connection.
Although the sequel to 1942 hospital drama Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant, starring Van Johnson as Dr. Randall "Red" Ames was Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case (1943), the next two sequels were Three Men in White (1944) and Between Two Women (1945).
The original Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) was followed by Belles on Their Toes (1952), in stark contrast to the remake Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) and its sequel, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005).
Frank Sinatra's too-cool-for-school detective picture Tony Rome (1967) -- he played the lead character -- was followed by Lady in Cement (1968).
Fellow rat-packer Dean Martin's rival detective series, built around the character Matt Helm, were called Murderer's Row (1966), The Ambushers (1967) and The Wrecking Crew (1968).
The follow up to Sitting Pretty (1948) was Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), though for the third film the public's affection for know-it-all bachelor Lynne Belvedere (Clifton Webb) dictated the title Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951).
Even the relatively recent Star Wars (1977) was followed by The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983); Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999) really codified the numbers.
The Indiana Jones films are a similiar case: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), didn't get its "Indiana Jones and the" Raiders of the Lost Ark title until after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) firmly established the Indy brand.
I just saw Barbarella and have a real trivia question: Is it true that Anita Pallenberg's voice was dubbed and, if so, why? -- Sue
FlickChick: It is true that Anita Pallenberg -- whose career as an actress is greatly overshadowed by her career as a Rolling Stones girlfriend (she dated Brian Jones, lived with Keith Richard and may have had an affair with Mick Jagger during the filming of Performance -- was dubbed in Barbarella. The reason: Director Roger Vadim apparently felt that her Black Queen didn't sound as super-sexy as she looked. The undercover voice was RADA-trained Joan Greenwood, whose husky, sultry tones belie the fact that she was nearly 50 at the time.
Some of the most famous -- famous being a highly relative term in this context -- cases in which the voices and the faces were supplied by two different individuals:
Glenn Close dubbed all of then-model Andie McDowell's dialogue in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
Nikki Van Der Zyl voicing bikinied bombshell Ursula Andress in Dr. No (Van Der Zyl did the same for several other foreign-born voiced many Bond Girls -- see her web site for details
Charles Grey (The Rocky Horror Picture Show's wheelchair-bound Dr. Scott) voicing veteran UK character actor Jack Hawkins in more than a dozen film and TV projects made between roughly 1965 and 1973, the year he died; Hawkins lost his voice to throat cancer somewhere between 1959 and 1962. When Grey didn't supply Hawkins' voice, actor Robert Rietty stepped in.
DVD Tuesday: Peter Lorre as the Father of All Serial Killers
DVD Tuesday: M, Peter Lorre and Fritz Lang: The serial killer thriller is born!
I just received a copy of Jon J Muth's stunning four-part 1990 graphic-novel adaptation of the groundbreaking serial killer film, M, newly reissued by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., and it inspired me to recommend Fritz Lang's 1931 original.
Inspired by the real-life crimes of Peter Kurten, the child-murderer dubbed "monster of Dusseldorf," is a first class thriller driven by the simultaneous pursuit of killer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) by the police and the Berlin underworld: Normally bitter enemies, they're united in common revulsion for a murderous pedophile. The police have law and up-to-date technology on their side, but the criminals know the darkness.
Lang's brilliant visual touches are haunting: The slashing shadows, the high angle shots that suggest menacing angels hovering over Berlin, children's playthings – a ball, a clown-shaped balloon --set forlornly free as their owners are whisked away, the "M" a blind street vendor chalks onto the coat of the man he recognizes by the whistled snatch of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt, a tune he heard just before a little girl vanished.
But Peter Lorre's performance as Beckert is the film's dark heart. Pasty, bulging-eyed and pudgy (Hollywood studio executive put him on a crash diet that produced his slim silhouette in The Maltese Falcon), Lorre looks like an oversized baby, and his anguished interior monologues have a child's selfish single-mindedness. It's not his fault, he can't help himself, no-one knows how awful it is to be him – that's a far cry from the elegant intellectual posturings of Anthony Hopkis' Hannibal Lecter and has the awful ring of truth.
The Criterion double-disc special edition of M comes loaded with top-notch extras, but any version is fine – you don't need a word of commentary or a historical featurette to be plunged into Lang and Lorre's world of madness, desperation, horror and despair.
Things to Consider:
What's the difference between empathy and sympathy?
Is it possible to empathize with someone who does hideous things – say, a child murderer?
What do you think of Latin writer Terence's (190-160 B.C.) famous maxim, which addresses this question: "I am human; nothing human is alien to me" (Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto).
Do you agree that M is the template for subsequent films about serial killers? Why or why not?
DVD Tuesday: Charlton Heston in the Great Touch of Evil
DVD Tuesday: When Charlton Heston met Orson Welles; in praise of Touch of Evil; one wild and sleazy ride through the darkness at the edge of border towns.
And it opens with one of the most justly famous tracking shots in movie history: a sinuous, three-minute and 20-second glide through the crowded streets of seedy Los Robles, following behind a white convertible en route to the U.S. border with an ominous tick… tick… tick… always audible through the clamor of ambient noise and Henry Mancini's ominously jazzy score.
Touch of Evil was designed to be a sleazy B-movie, but Welles turned it into a sleazy masterpiece. Heston plays celebrity narcotics investigator Miguel "Mike" Vargas, newly married to über-gringa Susan (Leigh). They plan to honeymoon in Los Robles, the self-proclaimed "Paris of the Border," but just as they cross the U.S./Mexico checkpoint — the first time they've been together in his homeland — and share a kiss, that white convertible explodes.
The passengers were a wealthy American developer with extensive business connections in Los Robles and a floozie (the gloriously tawdry Joi Lansing); Vargas is drawn into the investigation headed by thoroughly corrupt, bigoted, obese Texas lawman Captain Hank Quinlan (Welles). Meanwhile, the brother of a drug kingpin Vargas arrested (and who will certainly go to jail if Vargas testifies at his trial) tries to intimidate Vargas by terrorizing Susan.
The story is pure pulp, but Welles' gloriously stylized compositions, editing and camera movements are sheer poetry, a symphony in contrasts: Claustrophobic interiors and agoraphobic exteriors, Welles' corpulent excess and the clean, hard lines of Heston's face and limbs, sunwashed tourist attractions and the perversities that lurk in the shadows.
And who but Welles would have cast Heston as Mexican (he claimed he felt it would add interest to a dull, straight-arrow role) and Aryan icon Dietrich as the gypsy Tanya? (Though in Suspects David Thompson makes a thorough argument that Tanya is Amy Jolly, the saloon singer Dietrich played in Morocco, only 25 years and countless miles of following her French Legionnaire lover through the African desert later.) And Welles handed Tanya the film's most gloriously world-weary line: "What does it matter what you say about people?"
What indeed.
It doesn't matter whether you see the standard Touch of Evil or the restored 1998 director's cut: Either way, it's a treat.
Things to Consider:
What are your favorite Charlton Heston movies and why?
What does it take to elevate pulp material to something more enduring?
Casting against type can produce fascinating results or flat-out disasters: Examples?
Ask FlickChick: Depp in Dark Shadows and Mystery Movies Identified!
Ask FlickChick: What's up with Johnny Depp's Dark Shadows, and can you name these movies?
Question: Is the Dark Shadows movie dead and, if not, is Johnny Depp still going to be in it? -- HCRD
FlickChick:Dark Shadows, a joint project between Johnny Depp's Infinitum-Nihil production company and producer Graham King's GK Films, is still in development, but it doesn't look as though a lot has gone on since mid-2007.
That's when they secured rights from the estate of Dan Curtis to base a movie on the 1966-1971 supernatural soap opera; Curtis developed the series, made two feature films based on it in the 1970s, and later went on to produce and direct a slew of supernatural films, mostly for TV. At this time, there's no screenwriter attached to the project, but it does have a distributor: Warner Bros.
Dark Shadows was briefly and unsuccessfully revised as a 1990s TV series, but there is a loyal fan base who could make a theatrical film successful, if – and only if – it got the tone and characters right. Depp is a longtime fan of the original series and would star as tormented vampire Barnabas Collins (originally played by Jonathan Frid), the show's most popular character. For my money, if anyone could make sure Dark Shadows got done right, it would be Depp. Fingers crossed.
Question: At least seven years ago, I saw a serial killer movie on cable and I've been searching for it ever since. All I remember is that the killer was taking body parts from his victims in order to create Jesus Christ’s body. He may have been doing this so he could bring Jesus back to life, but I'm not sure about that, and there may have been a rooftop scene between the killer and the detective pursuing him. Thanks -- Monique
PS: I just want to take the time to say you’re are my favorite on the podcast and my Netflix queue is filled with your recommendations. Keep up the awesome work.
FlickChick: Thanks! You're looking for Resurrection (1999), which reunited Highlander (1986) director and star Russell Mulcahy and Christopher Lambert, who also co-wrote the story. I happen to be a big fan: It's really sleazy and nasty, but it's pretty damned entertaining (and perhaps damned is the word, given the subject matter).
Question: Sometime, maybe during the 1940s George Brent, Barbara Stanwyck and Zackary Scott made a movie together, and I'm trying to find out the title. Stanwyck's character was in a train wreck and pregnant. Thanks for any suggestions as to how I might locate this movie. -- Ruth
FlickChick: I think you're conflating two or more films. With the Exception of 1944's Hollywood Canteen – which was basically a showcase for Hollywood stars playing themselves -- Barbara Stanwyck never made a movie with Zachary Scott, and Scott never made a film with George Brent.
Stanwyck made five films with Brent -- including My Reputation (1946), in which Stanwyck plays a young, socially prominent widow who defies convention to take up with a soldier (Brent) soon after her husband's death -- but I don't think any of them is what you're looking for.
I'm pretty sure you're thinking of No Man of her Own (1950), based on the Cornell Woolrich novel I Married a Dead Man. Stanwyck plays Helen, who's pregnant and has been abandoned by her lover.
She decides to make a fresh start and buys a ticket on a west-bound train; she meets and befriends wealthy newlyweds Patrice and Bill Hazzard, who are en route to visit Bill's family; they've never met or even seen a picture of Patrice.
Just as Patrice lets Helen try on her wedding ring, the train crashes; Helen survives, Bill and Patrice both die, and because Helen is wearing Patrice's ring, the Hazzards welcome her as their widowed daughter-in-law. Complications inevitably ensue.
The novel has been filmed several times, most recently as Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), with Ricki Lake; it was appears to have been the uncredited inspiration for the 2001 TV movie She's No Angel.
Question: I saw part of a movie on a pay channel and would like to see the rest, but I can't remember the title. It was set in the 1800s and was about a man from England who marries a girl whose mother died in a fire; he later learns that the mother was actually crazy.
Also, they move to the girl's native country – I'm not sure, but I think it was St. Dominique or some place like that. I would really be happy if you could supply the title. Thanks -- Cris
FlickChick: You're describing Wide Sargasso Sea, though I don't know whether you saw the 1993 theatrical feature or the 2006 made-for-UK television version. Both are based on the 1966 novel by English writer Jean Rhys, who grew up on the Caribbean island of Dominica.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Jane Eyre, and in the '60s it was a very unusual undertaking to wrote prequels and sequels to literary novels – it's more common now. The Englishman is unnamed, but he's clearly Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester as a young man, and his Jamaican-born bride is the madwoman in the attic – the first Mrs. Rochester.
The novel tells her story, from troubled youth to sad end, touching on potent issues of race, class and colonialism without feeling the least bit agenda-driven: It's a terrific book in its own right and a fascinating companion piece to Jane Eyre. I think the 1993 movie is flawed but interesting, and I've read great things about the 2006 version, but I haven't seen it.
DVD Tuesday: Bonnie and Clyde, celebrity outlaws extraordinaire!
DVD Tuesday: Bonnie and Clyde – The wild, the beautiful and the damned come to DVD in a new deluxe edition.
It's hard to look at Bonnie and Clyde (1967) today and understand what a visceral shock it was in 1967: We've had 40 years to get used to sympathetic killers, abrupt shifts in tone and serious violence: The road to Natural Born Killers (1994) started with Bonnie and Clyde. And frankly, Bonnie and Clyde is a great movie that holds up four decades later.
Directed by Arthur Penn and written by Robert Benton and David Newman, the film's inspiration was the exploits of Depression-era outlaws Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway), Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and their gang, makeshift gang, which consisted of Clyde's Brother and sister-in-law (Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons), and teenager W. D. Jones. The film's C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) stands in for Jones who was, unlike the rest of the gang, still alive when Bonnie and Clyde was made; he still sued Warner Bros. for invasion of privacy and defamation of character. The suit was still pending when he was shot to death in a brawl (maybe over a woman, maybe drugs) in 1974. Playboy published Jones' lenghthy reminiscence (presumably ghostwritten) of his days with the Barrow Gang in 1968.
Newman and Benton's screenplay recasts Barrow and Parker in light of the '60s counterculture, which isn't as great a stretch or distortion of the truth as some naysayers have suggested. Yes, they were first and foremost bank robbers. But Depression-era America was a place of deep populist discontent with the establishment: The term hadn't been coined yet, but people were angry at the government, heads of industry and bankers, whom they saw as colluding to keep power and wealth for themselves and cut everyone else out.
Parker and Barrow robbed banks and defied the law, which played pretty well to dispossessed farmers, workers whose homes were repossessed after they lost their jobs and couldn't find new ones, and poor folks used to being pushed around by the police. And Bonnie and Clyde understood the media: Dime novelists created the popular images of Western outlaws like Jesse James, but Bonnie and Clyde shaped their own, sending carefully posed photos of themselves to newspapers (check out the real-life, gun-toting Bonnie in a pose Faye Dunaway mimicked in the film), accompanied by Bonnie's self mythologizing doggerel.
The film's glamorization of criminals came in for criticism, and it's certainly true that Dunaway and Beatty were vastly better looking than Bonnie and Clyde. Of course, they're vastly better looker than 95% of the world, which is why they were movie stars.
More seriously, the Barrow gang killed a lot of people, mostly officers of the law; the film doesn't soft-pedal the fact that they were murderers, but it doesn't demonize them, either. Jones just complained that Penn and his screenwriters made life on the run look like more fun than it was: "That Bonnie and Clyde movie made it all look sort of glamorous," he wrote, "but like I told them teenaged boys sitting near me at the drive-in showing: 'Take it from an old man who was there. It was hell.'"
The film's tonal shifts, from near-slapstick comedy to sudden horror, also bothered people, but it's a well thought-out strategy: It captures the way life can change in an instant – one moment everything's a lark, and the next moment it's all gone bad. And the violence really bothered many viewers. It's pretty graphic, which I would argue is exactly as it should be: Bonnie and Clyde is about violent lives. In any event, if haven't seen Bonnie and Clyde, now's the time to catch up. And if you have, share you thoughts...
Things to Consider:
How far from the known facts can a movie stray before it turns you off?
Do you think viewers should know that movies are inherently works of fiction unless they're documentaries (and sometimes not even then)?
