Faye Dunaway and Clyde Barrow glamorize bank robbery in Arthur Penn classic
BONNIE AND CLYDE (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, July 17, and Saturday, July 18
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
Arthur Penn changed the course of Hollywood — and world cinema — in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde, a film previously offered to such Nouvelle Vague luminaries as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Cowritten by David Newman (Superman I-III) and Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer), the film mythologizes the true story of depression-era bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, played magnificently by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. At its heart, Bonnie and Clyde is a passionate yet unusual love story, filled with close-ups of the gorgeous Dunaway, who is first seen naked, running to her bedroom window confident and carefree, more a modern 1960s woman than a poor 1930s small-town waitress. Meanwhile, Barrow might know how to shoot a gun, but he’s a dud in bed; “I ain’t much of a lover boy,” he tells Bonnie early on, so their passion plays out in fast-moving car chases and shootouts rather than under the covers (while also playing off of Beatty’s already well-deserved reputation as a ladies’ man). They pick up an accomplice in gas-station attendant C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) and are soon joined by Clyde’s brother, Buck (Gene Hackman), and his wife, Blanche (Oscar winner Estelle Parsons), and continue their rampage as heroic, happy-go-lucky hold-up artists, leading up to one of the most influential and controversial endings ever put on celluloid, an unforgettable finale of violent and poetic beauty. Penn (Little Big Man, Target), editor Dede Allen (The Hustler, Serpico), and Oscar-winning cinematographer Burnett Guffey (All the King’s Men, Birdman of Alcatraz) redefined the gangster picture with their creative use of slow motion, long takes, and crowded shots, defying Hollywood conventions in favor of unique and innovative storytelling devices, allowing the film to work on multiple levels. Nominated for ten Academy Awards, Bonnie and Clyde is screening July 17 & 18 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines favorites as Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers, and double features of John Milius’s Dillinger and Don Siegel’s Escape from Alcatraz and Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place and The Boston Strangler.
About ten minutes into journalist David Thorpe’s absolutely charming yet emotionally bittersweet Do I Sound Gay?, he is at dinner with his best friends, Alberto and Sam, and the three are discussing the title question. It’s a fascinating conversation that is worth detailing extensively here. “I have the impression that you think it sounds bad,” Alberto says about David’s voice. “I interpret David’s feelings about this, and the feelings around this whole project, as bad. He has negative feelings about his voice, about the perception that it creates.” “And you don’t feel that at all yourself?” Sam asks. Alberto responds, “I have sort of a generic self-loathing that is created around my gayness. . . . . But I don’t think I can say it’s the only thing, or the main thing.” Finally, David chimes in, explaining, “I think I feel out of sync with my voice, and, at least it seems to me, that it’s anxiety about sounding too gay, so, okay, let’s see what it’s like to not sound gay, and maybe I’ll feel more in sync and maybe I’ll have some idea what my voice should sound like.” Alberto then gets to the heart of the matter, inquiring, “But you could also argue, why don’t you just accept how you sound?” And Alberto sums it all up: “We have never talked about this idea until you brought it up. I don’t know anybody else that I’ve talked to about it either. So I think there is this thing, obviously, that we all are aware of that hasn’t been spoken of. Maybe this is the elephant in the room.” David spends the rest of the film exploring the elephant in the room, meeting with speech therapists who examine his voice and teach him how to change it; talking to such out-of-the-closet gay icons as Dan Savage, Tim Gunn, Margaret Cho, David Sedaris, Don Lemon, and George Takei, who delve into their own gayness and how their voice is part of that; introducing us to a boy who was beaten up at school at a very young age because of his voice; and interviewing gay people on the street, who share their thoughts on whether they, or he, do or don’t sound gay, and whether that matters. Sedaris, whose short story “Go Carolina” served as inspiration for Thorpe, tells him, “I’m embarrassed to say this, but sometimes somebody will say, ‘I didn’t know you were gay.’ It’s like, Why does that make me feel good. I hate myself for thinking that. It’s very disturbing. I thought I was beyond that. What’s the problem if somebody assumes that I’m gay when I open my mouth? Why do I have a problem with that?”
