Bonnie and Clyde

This 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the famed gangsters was one of the most popular movies of it's time and is considered one of the most influential movies of it's time. Shot at a time when Hollywood was changing to a more modern approach to movie making the film showed a mix of sensuality and violence that had never been seen in a successful wide screen release.

The Bonnie and Clyde story is a complicated one and the movie certainly simplifies the story. That said the movie is a stunning success. The first thing I noticed in this movie was Faye Dunaway. As the movie begins she is laying in bed, naked, having an internal fight with herself about getting out of bed for another day at her hated waitress job. Looking out the window she sees a young man attempting to steal her Momma's car. She talks to him and on a dare comes out to talk a man who introduces himself as Clyde Barrow. As to the nudity we do not see anything, save a bare back, and the realization when she dresses quickly she puts on no undergarments but Dunaway oozes sensuality in this role that I have never seen in any movie previously. This part of her character fades as the criminals life on the run becomes tiresome, but at the beginning of this movie it can barely fit on the screen, when Clyde takes her for a Coke and the camera pays special attention to her drinking and then talking over the top of the bottle as kids will sometimes do she is a movie star. A presence like few you will see.

After bragging of his exploits to Bonnie she dares him to show her and he goes and steals a little money from a small store in town. They flee and Bonnie is so excited by the act, she had been desperate in her boredom, that she wants to have sex with Clyde in the car, she can barely contain herself. Clyde lets her know that " he ain't no loverboy" , he is impotent, and one sees how outrageous this relationship is right from the beginning.

The movie goes from there, they add members to their gang as they go. Gene Hackman plays Buck Barrow, Clyde's brother who is paroled and looking to make good decisions. His wife is played by Estelle Parsons, a preachers daughter who immediately comes in conflict with Bonnie. They could not be more different. Buck soon gets sucked into the crime wave.

Denver Pyle of Dukes of Hazzard fame appears a a bounty seeking Texas Ranger, Gene Wilder has his first movie role, and Dub Taylor also appears.

A funny note, Estelle Parsons, who looked familiar, but honestly looked like a man in drag I struggled to identify. Then I realized she played Roseanne's mother on the famous sitcom. Parson for her part won an Oscar for this role, it was the most unlikable character in the whole movie, annoying times ten, I am on Bonnie's side on that score.

This was a very good movie. The death scene itself changed movie history and in general the movie broke many rules and set many new precedents. Beatty was strong, but at least for this reviewer this movie was all about Faye Dunaway. One of the most stunningly sensual roles you will ever see in a movie.

Shenandoah

This 1965 movie stars Jimmy Stewart. There might not be an actor that I enjoy more than Jimmy Stewart. Stewart plays Charlie Anderson, a Virginia widower with six sons. Living an idyllic, yet lonely without his wife, life running the family farm Charlie Anderson wants to keep his sons out of the Civil War.

Watching this movie one sees several people that are faces you recall from other TV shows. There is Dabs Greer and Kevin Hagen later to be Reverend Alden and the Doctor on Little House on the Prairie. Denver Pyle, later to be Uncle Jesse on the Dukes of Hazzard and John Wayne's oldest son Patrick Wayne also appear.

The story itself is fairly predictable. Charlie Anderson, somehow, inexplicably so, has managed to get through four years of the civil war in Virginia with no damage to his home or his family. Still he is facing pressure from his community as to why his sons are not in the war.

Eventually the family does become, against their will, in the war. The youngest son having been mistaken for a Confederate Soldier is taken prisoner. Anderson decides to go looking for him and on the way more heartache is in store.

Oscar worthy the movie is not. Still the scenery is nice and Jimmy Stewart is worth the price of admission for any movie he is in. Interestingly the anti war sentiment was thought to be a correlation to Vietnam but the timing of 1965, when the war was widely supported and Stewart's stalwart Conservative record makes it unlikely he would have knowingly particpated in a movie with such an obvious corralary.

Worth watching.