1967’s ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ is directed by Arthur Penn and stars Warren Beaty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard. It tells the true story of Bonnie Parker, a bored waitress that falls in love with a crook named Clyde Barrow, and together they start a violent and deadly crime spree, while being pursued by the police. The ending to ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ is undoubtedly one of the most famous and influential endings in the history of cinema, but why?
Well, despite Penn’s classic being a violent film in general, with the deaths of other gang members being bloody and drawn out, ‘Bonnie & Clyde’s’ ending specifically revolutionised the way violence would be portrayed in films forevermore, even as early as in Sam Peckinpah’s ‘The Wild Bunch’, just a couple of years later. The deaths of Bonnie and Clyde were incredibly shocking to viewers in 1967 for multiple reasons. Firstly, this was one of the earliest times in American cinema that deaths on screen had shown puffs of smoke appearing and pieces of clothing being ripped off. Prior to this scene, fatalities in films were generally a clean cut, tidy event. It was described at the time by Pauline Kael of New Yorker Magazine, a critic whose love of the film propelled her to become a leading authority on film at the time, as a “ragdoll dance of death” , which I think is a quote that perfectly typifies the brutality of the ending, with the bodies of the two central figures flailing around aimlessly with no control over their limbs and no chance of survival. There was a stark contrast in what Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, the most established critic in the U.S. at the time, said about the ending, believing that the brutality of these killings “is as pointless as it is lacking in taste”, but I personally completely disagree with this statement. I think that the brutality of the killings at the end, combined with other factors, makes the death of the two main characters far more heart-breaking and impactful to the viewer as we have grown to care for these anti-heroes so much throughout. Also, the sheer mass of bullets in the ending scene adds massively to the shock of the viewer in this ending, especially back in 1967. In Stanley Cavell’s ‘The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film’, he said that the film “persists in an elegy of bullets long after the pair are dead”, which is a key moment in the scene, as the eradication of the couple is all that is on the minds of the police, and so they show no remorse, increasing the endings shock and sadness. Cavell’s use of “elegy” is particularly apt as an elegy is typically a lament for the dead, therefore suggesting that Dunaway and Beaty’s characters had no hope of staying alive.
But it is not just the sheer violence of the ending that was so innovative, as the camerawork and direction of would also be copied endlessly, as this enhanced the speed of this speed of the scene so much, making it infintely more shocking. Even though the couple are killing people and partaking in many acts of violence, we identify with Bonnie and Clyde as the police that are chasing them throughout the film are not three dimensional characters, and so we do not care for them, whereas there are moments that make us sympathise with the couple, such as when they do not make love till late on, showing Clyde’s unexpected insecurity, adding another layer to his character, and these characterisations keep in touch with the romantic anti-hero American gangster tradition that we see in Scarface (1932) and Little Caesar (1930), which audiences love to see and root for. Because we care for them so much, Penn’s brilliant use of close ups to build tension and speed in the brutality of the final scene is only more impactful. His takes are incredibly short, with the close ups of the characters swiftly swapping between Ivan Moss, Bonnie, and Clyde, before eventually having an extreme close up of Bonnie & Clyde staring hopelessly into each other’s eyes for the final time, building up the romanticism of the story and their journey throughout the film, before ripping it away from us.
Also, the social context of the film and its ending make it even more important and impactful, with Bonnie & Clyde being released in 1967, during the latter stages of the Vietnam war (1955-1975). Many American’s were not sold on going to Vietnam in the first place, but by 1967, public opinion was heavily against the United States having soldiers in Vietnam. Penn uses the devastation wrought by Bonnie and Clyde to convey the senseless violence that American youth was walking into with the Vietnam War, which is what the brutality in the violence in the final scene eludes to, with many of the young American men who were being gunned down in Vietnam and many audience members being the same age as Parker and Barrow, meaning that the film very much resonated with audiences, bringing into “the almost frighteningly public world of movies things that people have been feeling, saying and writing about”, as Pauline Kael said in her review. This also meant that public opinion turned further against troops being in Vietnam, with Stephen Prince stating in “The Hemorrhaging of American Cinema: Bonnie and Clyde’s Legacy of Cinematic Violence” that “The Vietnam War and disintegration of civil society that accompanied it helped put the subject of violence on the national agenda in an urgent and ominous way”.
For me, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ has one of the best and most influential endings of all time without question, and for so many different reasons. The social context and message Penn was conveying in regards to the Vietnam War, the sheer innovation of the brutality, and the direction and characterisations that enhanced this brutality, making for such a heartbreaking ending, are all elements that will make “Bonnie and Clyde” stand as a timeless classic.
CinemaStance 