Bonnie and Clyde, the movie

There is authenticity and there is sufficient authenticity. "Bonnie and Clyde" lacked the latter. Why? The music, the acting, the writing, and a special fusillade all lacked sufficient authenticity.

What Scruggs played was banjo's "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". It was performed by him starting in the 40's and "Bonnie and Clyde" (B and C) was set in the early 30's. The happy or jolly banjo sounds gave a lilt at times to motion on screen, usually cars in motion. The music breaks in as apparently needed here and there and has a slower mournful sound near the end.

At the start of the movie there was a repressed bedroom Bonnie upstairs at the family home. She had been working as a waitress. She saw out her window that Clyde was looking to steal the family car. He had been in State Prison and his claim to fame was toes missing courtesy of prison antics and his propensity to rob banks.

Bonnie wanted to know what armed robbery was like. Well, there was presented a phallic pistol that she dutifully stroked. The gun did work. They introduced themselves in a grocery store while stealing. Then it was "car and kiss".

[The also dutiful inhibitory bit got introduced as Clyde said he didn't like kisses though he did not like boys. Bonnie had her chance (fat chance) to go home but this (anything) was better than being a waitress. She had been smarter than all others in high school. There were more dutiful words about youth (the movie was released in 1967) with the viewers being young, and Beatty and Dunaway were good looking, and in rebellion, and moving fast along the roads of hopelessness, and they and a farmer shot up that farmer's home lost to the bank as social protest, and they had their funny-sad adventures covered in the press, and so on.]

Then it was on to real banks, after a robbery attempt of a failed one, and murder later as a clinging banker got it in the head through a getaway car's side window. Emphasis of concern was then on why the driver, Moss, parked the car and was still parked as the robbery had gotten beyond the bank.

A more dutiful scene awaited viewers as Bonnie writes, something of artistry, of talent, like all the youth of the 60's self-reported that they had too in abundance. Then, later, Eugene was shouting at Velma, his girlfriend, to step on it as B and C gave chase in a turn-the-tables- on- them after B and C stole Eugene's car. So Eugene and Velma joined the gang for a day until knowledge of Eugene's profession as an undertaker got them left in the road. But all knew they were folks just like them.

The best scene brought Bonnie near home to have a family reunion at which Ma made the sensible remark - keep running. What else was there to do? They were too stupid for disguises or strategy near the borders of states then currently being travelled. To go out West, work, settle down for a time, were all beyond them. It could have been better but it wasn't. It was fun and sad and sad and fun. Robbery for little money and few groceries was their forte.

[For those of that era to the rural North of their exploits, the news about them was received knowing that they weren't dead yet and so no information could be gotten about how they had got it. The interest was in when and how. If B and C were to rob and kill among them, then there would have soon been answers about the when and the how.]

Clyde was hit. Bonnie was hit. They had been surrounded. Buck, Clyde's brother, was dead, shot in the head. Blanche, Buck's wife, was captured. Moss took B and C to his father's house. B and C recovered. The most violent scene occurred there as the devious father punishes his son for having a tattoo and for taking up with B and C.

The father betrayed B and C to get his son's prison time reduced. Meanwhile, Bonnie wrote and the dutiful outcome regarding the inhibition was presented as Clyde overcame his inhibition because of what she wrote and got more than hot for Bonnie. The father, the betrayer, stops them on their return to his house. From behind rustling bushes the lawful authority opened fire. Clyde, out of the car, and Bonnie, in the car, were hit multiple times, blood showed. A special herky-jerky sequence showed Bonnie getting hers. There was not a shot of the corpses. The viewers were shown the back of the car. End.

Beatty had been Beatty, an excitable Beatty. Dunaway was a 60's chick stuck into the 30's. Estelle Parsons as Blanche and Gene Hackman as Buck acted well enough that the title for the movie, on acting merit alone, should have been "Blanche and Buck".