Commentary on Bonnie and Clyde often states that the film broke a lot of Hollywood conventions and helped blaze the trail for a new style.
What specific Hollywood conventions were broken by Bonnie and Clyde?
*****
Maybe it's because I've always had a weakness for lost causes, once they're really lost.
Few things off the top of my head:
- The mix of comic scenes with scenes of violence, intense drama and that weird, beautiful family reunion scene
- The realistic (for the time) portrayal of violence, with blood and moans and pain
- The frank (for the time) sexuality (consider the scene where Bonnie tries to perform fellatio on Clyde in the bed)
- The likeability (some would say glorification) of criminals (we are sad when they die)
- The unlikeability of the sheriff (who, in prior years, would have been the hero)
- The portrayal of an unconventional "family" who live together and mostly love each other, reflecting the '60s hippie ethos
- The use of period music (the bluegrass) rather than all orchestral scoring
- The pointed social commentary (the Depression-era dispossessed, the poor farmer shooting at the bank sign and his foreclosed home, the Establishment as villains, etc)
- The depiction of, for lack of a better word, "style" (the clothes, the brash attitudes, the coolness) and how its used to establish the triumph of the outsiders over the law-abiding squares
Very interesting. Thanks!
*****
Maybe it's because I've always had a weakness for lost causes, once they're really lost.