The Cinematography and Editing on a Rewatch!

http://feelthefilms.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/bonnie-and-clyde-on-a-rew atch/

Seeing a film a second time is a great reward for something like Bonnie and Clyde that has so much to offer with its cinematography and editing. It allows you to not focus on the narrative and really observe *how* the filmmakers chose to execute the script.

Being reminded of the basic components themselves are a breath of fresh air for the times. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty deliver electric work in their individual portrayals, as well as creating an iconic and beautiful couple. The script’s peculiar choices forms many cliches we see done to death in today’s films. Bonnie and Clyde is the ultimate anti-genre film. Gangster film meets Western meets Love Story.

The love between Bonnie and Clyde particularly interested me in my second viewing because it’s the type of love most of us do not want to have in our lives. We are almost programed to make our sexual relations a priority for the health of our relationships. Clyde’s sexual complications (which sources say was developed from abuse in prison) create a restrictions for how they can show affection for each other. We see two people love each other for the sake of the other person and that alone.

Bonnie and Clyde is famous for the landmark editing. Film editing that throws away the old school technique and vamps up the story through props and character psyches. It’s a bumpy ride that Bonnie and Clyde has in store for its viewer.

Near the middle of the film, there’s a montage that catches the viewer in a different manner from the status quo by letting a bank robbery play out, but skipping ahead in time and allowing us to cut back and forth from the robbery to the interviews of bystanders from that crime. It’s uncalled for at the time in American film and gives the character’s duplicity more life and even heroism than it would from a the scenes being separately shown to the viewer.

Some of the most difficult areas to decipher as individual aspects in film are cinematography, editing, and directing. They rely on each other and often are fluidly blended together. Some shots/edited moments that really hit hard with ingenuity are the first half hour of scenes. Moments like Bonnie’s introduction, starting with her lips and the examination of her body, quickly followed by foreshadowing her character’s life of crime with her bed almost forming a prison cell in the frame.

Bonnie and Clyde also benefits from scenes that are shot with low angels. The film really invisions a departure from the typical, Hollywood-Studio editing that fits together perfectly like puzzle pieces (a perfect example of that is Sunset Blvd‘s masterful editing). There’s a rhythm to the editing, allowing the choreography to perfectly align in each shot and collecting every cut as one whole beautiful scene.

Rating: 10

Grade: A+

Feel the Films: A Blog by R.C.S. -> http://feelthefilms.wordpress.com/