“This here’s Miss Bonnie Parker. I’m Clyde Barrow. We rob banks.”
In the early days of cinema there were no real restrictions. Some filmmakers pushed the envelope of tastefulness a little too far, resulting in the Motion Picture Production Code, which dictated moral standards in film from 1930 to the late 60s. Ask someone today to describe an “old-fashioned” movie, and they’ll probably end up describing this code. By the late 60s, enforcing the code became too cumbersome, so the MPAA began working on rolling out movie ratings to replace it—granting filmmakers many new freedoms that had not been available for almost 40 years. Films quickly came out that exercised this new freedom; but the first film to really use that freedom artfully was Bonnie and Clyde. Directed by Arthur Penn (Night Moves, Little Big Man) and starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, this movie shocked audiences with graphic violence and discussion of sexuality. It’s actually rather tame by today’s standards; but when it came out, there had never been another movie like it.
Brandon Talks Movies 