Kinematoscope

Today we steadily progress in the countdown with a film that launched the "New Hollywood" era, glorified a pair of two-bit grocery-store robbers that had no larger legacy (like John Dillinger managed on his own), and set new standards of acceptable screen sex and violence: a 1967 number called Bonnie and Clyde.

The Key Players:

Our maestro is Arthur Penn, director of the celebrated The Miracle Worker, the westerns The Left Handed Gun and Little Big Man, as well as the feature-film adaptation of Arlo Guthrie's famous song Alice's Restaurant.

Producer and star Warren Beatty had already made a name for himself in Splendor In The Grass before headlining this picture. A storied career followed- Beatty has been nominated for fourteen Oscars of various types, winning one statue for directing his communist epic Reds. Beatty was the real driving force behind Bonnie and Clyde in his role as producer, hiring Penn and screenwriters David Newman and Robert Benton and receiving 40% of the final gross (which Warner Brothers had thought would amount to very little).

Faye Dunaway, making her second countdown appearance, has had a career that extends far beyond winning an Oscar for annoying the crap out of me in Network: from the highs of The Thomas Crown Affair and Barfly to the lows of Mommie Dearest and a cameo in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.

Gene Hackman co-stars, but we'll discuss him at length in future posts, and Estelle Parsons won an Oscar for Supporting Actress for her work in this film.



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The Story:

A simplified version of history, as Bonnie Parker (Dunaway) spots Clyde Barrow (Beatty) trying to steal her mother's car in the driveway, and brazenly yells at him while wearing no clothes.

An immediate bond forms, as Clyde tells Bonnie he robs banks, and produces a gun- intrigued, she strokes the muzzle (I am informed this is pretty risque for 1967), but doubts he's telling the truth. So he robs a grocery store right at that moment, and they hit the road in a stolen car (after finally learning one another's names).

They embark on their fabled, meandering crime spree through rural Texas. The first bank they hit has actually gone under three weeks before (a nod to the Depression setting), but they get by squatting in foreclosed houses and robbing whatever gas stations, grocers, and banks they come across. They pick up a teenage protege, C. W. Moss during a job.

Eventually they meet up with Clyde's brother Buck (Hackman) and his wife Blanche (Parsons). Buck gets along with everyone, but Blanche, the obvious square of the bunch, and Bonnie detest one another immediately.

The gang has a few run-ins with the law- in an early bank heist, Moss inexplicably starts parallel-parking the getaway car, delaying the escape and leading to Clyde shooting the bank-manager in the face through the car window (in a very oddly-framed shot). Another time, they tie up and humiliate a Texas Ranger named Frank Hamer who has pursued them across the border into Oklahoma.

After a long time on the run, Bonnie implores Clyde to let her visit her family. In another scene, the power-happy gang take a couple hostage (Gene Wilder in his screen debut, and the improbably-named Evans Evans) and chatter with them like friends, only to abruptly kick them out of the car when Bonnie dislikes that the man is an undertaker.

Eventually Frank Hamer (who has magically transformed into a coldly efficient lawman) catches up with them, and various gunfights ensue: finally Buck is shot in the head, while Blanche is blinded by shattering glass. Bonnie, Clyde and C. W. make a hasty retreat as Clyde's brother dies on the grass surrounded by police, marking an abrupt shift in the tone of the film.

The Artistry:

As landmark as it was, Bonnie and Clyde is tonally jarring from my perspective. Long sequences of gun-fire end abruptly with Flatt and Scruggs' jaunty banjo tune "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."

The film seems to expect levity by showing our would-be master criminals joking around with terrified bystanders, or laughing at their own jokes, but the script doesn't really work that hard to make them three-dimensional, or like-able. There are a couple of scenes that deal with Clyde's bedroom impotency (and the desire for violence that that might imply compensates), and Bonnie's desire to write poetry and be something more than a yokel, but neither one really grows up in any way.

Although if they did, it wouldn't be a very accurate representation. As it is, the biggest inaccuracies are the movie-star looks and wardrobe the pair maintains while on the lam. Frank Hamer would never have been caught by them- he was a legendary, semi-retired Ranger brought in specially to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde, since the local police and FBI weren't getting results. Also, C. W. Moss is an amalgamation of two different associates of the Barrow gang.

Technically, it's a well-made film- it was one of the first film's to employ squibs (exploding packets of fake blood) en masse for realism, and Burnett Guffney more than deserved his Oscar for cinematography.

A small commentary, echoed by the direct descendant Natural Born Killers, crops up on the media's obsession with crime when reporters interview fame-hungry police and witnesses to one of the bank heists.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

Hamer tricks the blinded Blanche into revealing C. W. Moss's name- this leads them to Moss's father, who agrees to turn over Bonnie and Clyde in exchange for his son's pardon.

It all ends, of course, in the climactic massacre scene, in which a rustle in the bushes is the only prelude our two lovers get before they're riddled with bullets for a solid thirty seconds, shot from multiple angles at multiple speeds.

After a minute or so of ringing silence as the police look on, the screen tells us its "THE END."

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

I can't say I was moved, but I've been desensitized, no doubt, by all of the screen violence and sexuality that Bonnie and Clyde opened the door for.

I'm still gonna go with lower, since innovation doesn't mask what were to me, flat performances in an uneven film. Alas.

The Legacy:

The National Film Registry feels that it's worth saving, and it's elevated the reputation of the real life Bonnie and Clyde well-beyond what it deserves. In plenty of documents like Bryan Burroughs' thoroughly-researched book Public Enemies, it's made clear that they were little more than hillbillies on a spree, little known outside of Texas.

In January it was announced that Hilary Duff (a manufactured pop-star) and Kevin Zegers (an actual actor who was in Transamerica) will star in a new version of the story (not a remake of this film in particular), The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Why not the ending scene (spoilers still involved, I suppose)? I watched and mostly just thought how awkward it'd be to act, with Dunaway sort of half in the car and Beatty rolling around on the ground (though as can clearly be scene in archival footage, in real life they were both in the car):



Leftover Thoughts:

-The compressed film version of events doesn't make it clear that the gang killed 14 people, mostly policemen.

-Blanche Barrow complained publicly about her shrill portrayal in the script, and Frank Hamer's widow actually sued the studio for writing him as so initially incompetent.

-Many historians strongly suspect that Bonnie, though complicit, never actually committed a murder or fired a gun herself (Dunaway is seen shooting several times in Bonnie and Clyde).

Hello, everybody. Do you feel the urge to yell at thunderstorms? Are you plagued by an irrational desire to spontaneously embark on long soliloquies about how mad you are (perhaps especially when you’re mad as hell?) ? Then Network may be the 1976 movie for you.

The Key Players:

Sidney Lumet, a multiple award winner and director of classic things that we will get to later like 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon (but also the director of The Wiz). He works from a script by screenwriter and playwright Paddy Chayefsky.

William Holden, the star of Sunset Boulevard and Oscar-winning star of Stalag 17 acts as our audience surrogate, an old-timer network news producer that’s getting to old for this proverbial shiznit. He mostly frowns and then lectures people.

Peter Finch is the iconic news castor that flips out on air when told of his impending retirement. After his death while promoting the film of a heart attack in January 1977, he became the only Australian and dead guy to win an Academy Award the next month. He mostly freaks out and then lectures people.

Faye Dunaway, from Bonnie and Clyde and doubtlessly a bunch of other things, is the hotshot entertainment producer that wants to sleaze-ify the news for a bigger share. She mostly lectures people about how important ratings are.

Elsewhere, Robert Duvall angrily lectures people about profits or something, Beatrice Straight lectures Holden as his wife, and Ned Beatty drops in for a fiery guest lecture about economics (spoiler alert! I found this film a little preachy!).



The Story:

So there’s a fictional network called UBS (BS, get it?), and it has a floundering news program with a floundering old anchor named Howard Beale (Finch). It falls to longtime friend and producer Holden to tell a whacked out Finch that he’s being asked to resign in two weeks time.

Finch naturally goes on air and announces that he’s planning to shoot himself on the air the following Tuesday. This causes of course an uproar with the bigwigs, with Duvall’s proxy for the parent company among them. Finch is fired, but then appears to come to his senses and asks to make an apology on air, to go out with dignity. Instead he goes on a rant about how he’s run out of bullshit (oh my goodness he made a swear!), and the network flips out again but the public loves it.

Dunaway gets the bright idea to retool the entire program into a farcical variety news show with a mystic and a long segment of Finch ranting for a while to a zombie-like, salivating populace which adores him for ranting like a lunatic.

Holden, who was forced out when he let Finch start ranting in the first place, then brought back, then fired again when Duvall gets more power, meanwhile leaves his wife (Straight) to embark on a stilted and inexplicable affair with Dunaway.

Eventually Finch starts to rant in a near-populist bent that angers the overlords once again. And everyone has to choose between ratings and integrity, and nobody chooses the latter. Also there’s a bit with a faux Vietnamese Liberation Army and a mob heiress or something.

The Artisticness:

Visually this film is pretty straightforward- there’s some business with a big bank of TV monitors, but otherwise I can’t remember a single memorable shot.

But damn if you can’t tell Chayefsky’s a playwright- somebody shut the hell up already!

I’m not going to lie to you people- I’m pretty pretentious, most of the time, and I think on occasion about the fine line between intelligence and condescension- Lumet and Chayefsky more or less obliterate it with this story.

Actual lines from this Academy Award winning screenplay:

“I hurt. Don't you understand that? I hurt badly.”

“Howard Beale is processed instant God.”

“And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.”

Do you know how many of those reflect actual human speech? None of them! None! This is not a cardinal sin- it would be more than forgivable in a satire if any of it were, you know, at all funny. Let’s move on.

The theme, such as it is, is a pretty clear dissemination on the bastardization of journalistic integrity for gimmicky ratings stunts. From Edward Murrow to that show where strippers read the news. And by “dissemination” I mean brutal, constant bludgeoning over the head with the idea.

THE ENDING! IS EVEN THE PLOT SMUG?

Yes it is- Ned Beatty, basically the head of all the head honchos, gets royally pissed at Finch when his ranting disrupts a buyout by a Middle Eastern company. So he hauls him into his office, and yells at him about the free market economy and the idea that there are no nations, just an interconnected series of corporations and dollars until Finch converts to the cause and stops preaching dissention on the air.

Naturally then his ratings start to go south, but Beatty won’t let him be taken off the air. So Duvall, Dunaway and company decide to have him assassinated. On air. Which he is, in a ridiculously artificial final scene to the film, and then because we haven’t had enough people explaining things to our feeble little minds, the narrator comes on and says “This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because of lousy ratings.”

Thanks, chotch. Didn’t catch that one on my own. Oh also Holden and Dunaway end their relationship with a whole lot of terrible television-centric clichés. Yawn.

END SPOILERS

Overall- Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Can you tell I didn’t enjoy this very much, at all? Lower, definitely lower. I’m not arguing that the acting here isn’t fine, and the writing accomplished if insufferable. But there’s clearly a fundamental disconnect with the entire emphasis for me.

Is it because the idea that the network news isn’t a paragon of virtue is nothing remotely shocking or risqué to me? That’s probably part of it, yeah. I’m one of the young degenerates that gets my news online or from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart because it’s just as good a source as any.

But characters with more than one dimension might have helped. Finch was a nonsensical zealot, but the kind of zealot that’s easily swayed. Holden was a bland righteous old fart, who didn’t even have an explanation for his attraction to Dunaway (other than the plot required it). Dunaway was pretty shrill, sorry.

I did like Duvall, who always plays mean pretty well. But mostly this hit a bunch of bum notes for me.

The Legacy:

But I’m in the vast minority on that one. This won four Oscars out of ten nominations- Screenplay, Finch, as well as Leading Actress for Dunaway, and an inexplicable Supporting Actress statue for Straight (who chewed scenery for a full 5 minutes and 40 seconds).

And it’s number 64 or so on the AFI list. Um, okay?

I’m just throwing this out there- I’m a bigger fan of the ten second part of the scene in the trunk in Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight where George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez randomly talk about and Clooney gets the line mostly wrong. I enjoyed that ten seconds more than this whole film.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Just out of spite, the Out Of Sight Trunk scene instead. I make the rules around here.



Leftover Thoughts:

• I was supposed to laugh during this film, right? Because I didn’t. Holden tells the same joke twice that has everyone in hysterics, but it’s pretty lame the first time.
• Is Peter Finch Albert Finney’s dad? Are they related? Did Sidney Lumet’s dad have a deep, craggy voice like those two, because Finney was just in Lumet’s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (which also misfired for me).