Violence as a sense of realism depicted through mise-en-scene is one of the most powerful themes in Bonnie and Clyde directed by Arthur Penn and released in 1967. The central point of this cinematic masterpiece is that crime and violence are interrelated; that one cannot exist without the other. When Clyde starts to take what is not his, it is only logical that someone will attempt to protect what actually is his. When the butcher tries to stop the grocery store robbery, physical violence ensues, and the butcher is injured. Once the match of violence is lit, it has no choice but to burn until all flammable ends have been destroyed. Identifying the theme of violence and treachery that flows through the film can be captured by taking a closer look at the cinematography of the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde in the final sequence, editing that flows throughout the length of the film giving the viewer a visual journey, and the overall mise-en-scene and sense of realism with this sequence that contributes to the world during this time.
We all experience and process films in our own unique ways. Whether we can truly examine the art form or editing that pulls us in, or if we just simply enjoy it as a leisure experience, film moves us in a copious amount of ways. When Bonnie and Clyde was first released it held a hostile reception from viewers across the nation. It eventually turned to admiration when viewers realized that the film’s images belong not to a tradition of presence, but to a tradition of textuality. At first, many viewers may have seen the film as glamorizing 1930’s violence, only later did they recognize the distance of those images as an ironic commentary on 1960’s violence. Film, like chance, favors the prepared mind.
Arthur Penn’s film represented a new kind of American filmmaking in the late 1960’s, in part because its complex spatial and temporal patterns of editing departed from the established norms. Bonnie and Clyde’s violent and clownish crime wave through the south surprises them by their notorious notoriety, and soon enough their blood shed through Texas gives way to darker encounters. Dede Allen was the main editor of this film and from time to time her editing skills help emphasize temporal and spatial realism. Reviewers around the globe and still to this day have credited her work on this film to truly capture its essence and realism of the world’s violence during this period.
Taking a closer look at the final sequence of the film helps us delve into the theme head on. It is the most influential and famous scene in the film. The strategies used serve as an invasive summary of the patterns and logic of editing. Accompanied by the staccato of machine-gun bullets, Bonnie and Clyde’s deaths are filmed in slow motion, their bodies reacting with an almost balletic-grace to the impact of the gunshots and to the rhythm of the film’s shots, which are almost as numerous. In nearly thirty cuts in approximately forty seconds, the film alternates between the two victims’ spasms and reestablishing shots of the death scene. Clyde’s fall to the ground is split into three shots, overlapping the action. The hail of bullets finally stops, and the film’s final minute is comprised of a series of seven shots of the police and other onlookers gathering around, without a single reverse shot of what they are seeing.
In their final freeze-frame of life, with a silent glance at each other, Bonnie and Clyde revealed both panic and love in their faces – knowing that something was threateningly wrong and that they were facing their ultimate destruction, the natural result of the escalating violence.
Lastly, one of the more creative dimensions of the film is the striking combination of slow, romantic scenes and fast-paced action sequences, which culminate in this final sequence engraving us with a cinematic memory forever. From the linkage of gunshots with camera shots to Bonnie and Clyde’s eyes meeting one another’s, this film has influenced viewers from French New Wave to the American public to this day. We can specifically see the romance in our selected sequence as the camera cuts back and forth between Bonnie and Clyde as Clyde admires her as she’s reading their story.
Although we can link the final sequence to violence, we can also dive into the concept of overall editing throughout the length of this feature film that contributes to the viewer’s emotional, mental, and physical states. The film showed a very satisfying style of Hollywood continuity editing, and the newer style disjunctive editing, which are executed perfectly together. Continuity editing gives the viewer the impression that the action unfolds with spatiotemporal consistency. A specific moment of continuity in our sequence is when the scene shifts from Bonnie reading the newspaper to the sheriff reading the same passage, and the camera gives an effect of blurring or dissolving right into the next scene.
An evident example of powerful editing in the film is the opening scene as well. It opens on an extreme close up of Bonnie’s mouth as she’s applying lipstick. The camera then quickly pans over with her judging look in the mirror and draws back. Bonnie gets up, crosses the room to flop on her bed, and pounds on the head-rail. The low-angle shot of Bonnie reveals the drab walls and ceiling of her room. She gets up again and crosses her room to get dressed. She appears to us as a tense, almost ferocious being which gives way to foreshadowing violent actions or a wild ride ahead. The opening scene holds so much immediacy allowing us to look back on it and sensing Bonnie’s restlessness and urgencies to do something. We learn more from Bonnie in this opening scene than we realize and from this point on we can truly see Bonnie’s sense of life and her thirst for adventure enabling her future actions to be acceptable.
Editing plays a huge role throughout the entire film, however, to Penn, cinematic realism and an overall sense of powerful mise-en-scene was another enormous part of his film especially during the time it was released because of worldly problems that were occurring thus allowing the viewer to sense his influence in this creation. Props played a huge role in the film from the cars, guns, lipstick, apple, and newspapers to the barbaric sounds and montage throughout. Newman and Benton, the producers, mixed humor and comedy with romance to offset the great violence. They had hoped that in seeing the violence committed by somewhat likeable and bumbling characters that it would be liberating to a nation that needed the tension released. The film did what New Age movies sought to do, solve a problem rather than just take people’s mind off the problem. By showing excessive amounts of violence, Penn almost is able to dull the shock of it to the viewers. In the sequence the low lighting and readings of their violent crimes attribute to an overall sense of violence as a theme, or in other words, you get what you deserve.
Penn’s influence for the final scene was from media reports and images of the Vietnam War, which were broadcasted daily during the filming of the movie. “It was a time,” he says, “where, it seemed to me that if we were going to depict violence, then we would be obliged to really to depict it accurately; the kind of terrible, frightening volume that one sees when one genuinely is confronted by violence. The intention there was to get this kind of spastic motion of genuine violence, and at the same time, the attenuation of time that one experiences when you see something, like a terrible automobile accident.” (Gross, NPR, 2008).
Conclusively we can analyze violence that flows through the film by taking a look at cinematography in the final sequence, editing within the sequence and overall shots, and the entire mise-en-scene that gives us a sense of realism portrayed in the world at this time. Diving deeper into the shots, editing, and dramatic effects allows us to see this film in a different light giving us insight into Penn’s work and reasoning behind Bonnie and Clyde. Said to be the definitive film of the 1960’s and proved to be one of the best to this day, we can understand the emotional effects on not only the viewer, but also American cinema as a whole. The violence in this film helped counteract and numb the real life pain that was occurring everyday. We can watch this film and look back on it as not only a lesson, but in some ways quite a blessing. Penn’s work sparked a new age in Hollywood giving way to new films and carving a path into cinematic history.