Bonnie and Clyde – In the headlights | Kinostalgia
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967), the hyper-famous flick about doomed gangsters, will be screening at the end of this month as a part of the American Independent Film Festival’s line-up. Isn’t it somewhat ironic for a film that was banking on quite standard means – pure energy and craftsmanship –, and which, like so many others, exited the gates of a classical-age Hollywood which was still deeply connected to the system, to appear today, in contrast to the suffocating stockyard of over-inflated and stuffed dead features which comprises the contemporary blockbuster industry, as being similar to an independent effort? Or maybe this is just just a tribute to one of the last (good) films that were on everybody’s lips? Anyways, before setting into motion the PR-istic wheel of obligatory labels – the most mythical, tragical, I-don’t-know-what film –, maybe it would be interesting to take a look at what Bonnie and Clyde has to say to us in this day and age, and what its place is in the short and stormy history (akin to the story of the two thieves) that was put into motion by cinema. In other words, maybe we should check how much of an incendiary potential a heterosexual couple stealing, in a mainstream narrative, from the rich, then ending up, predictably, in the long arm of the law, still keeps today
Film critic and journalist; writes regularly for Dilema Veche and Scena9. He studied film theory in Grenoble, Paris, Dublin.
