That Moment In Bonnie and Clyde (1967): Sexual Overtones and The First Meeting

Bonnie and Clyde is a 1967 historical drama about two young lovers in the 1930s who go a murderous crime spree and become the focus of one of the most celebrated crime stories ever told.

THE STORY: During the American Great Depression, Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) is a young, bored waitress living in her mother’s home, feeling trapped by life itself. One afternoon, feeling particularly defused by it all, succumbing to the listless prattling hours by reclining naked on her bed, she peers out her window to see a handsome man attempting to break into her mother’s car. Excited by his bravado, she quickly calls out to him to wait, slips on a sun dress and heads outside where she meets Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty). The two talk, become smitten, and not long after, he’s held up a shop and taken the cash, then steals a car and drives off with her, starting a short life of harrowing robbery and murder that soon makes them some of the most wanted in the country.

Directed by Arthur Penn, the film was a hot bed of controversy on release, with many critics claiming it glorified violence, this in a time of sweeping tonal shifts in Hollywood as many directors were turning toward more grounded, realistic stories that often put the archetypical bad guy in a more romanticized light. While it earned high marks for its acting and story, many felt that the–at the time–graphic nature of the film was appalling, something unprecedented when hit theaters, and was reason for the deluge of films that followed portraying violence like never before seen. Either way, it proved popular with audiences and in the decades that followed, ranked as one of cinema’s most significant achievements.

NEXT: Who are Bonnie and Clyde?

Based on real life criminals of the same name, Bonnie and Clyde have become synonymous with glamorized anti-heroes. In the movie, Dunaway, in only her third film appearance and Beatty, already well-established as a leading man, would help in romanticizing the stories, their movie star good looks and sexually-charged performances further firing the controversy at the time about the use of violence in movies. While the film took some dramatic liberties and updated some themes from the source, many moments were drawn from actual accounts and witnesses. The film and both leads were nominated for Academy Awards.

What makes these two performances work so well is in fact, the sexual dynamic. The scolding hot sensuality that Dunaway brings to the role had fans swooning, with director Penn capturing her powerfully alluring presence in extreme close-ups and soft full-body shots that had audiences fully enraptured. Beatty, a chisel-chinned, dark-haired complemented her with his bad boy image and carefree attitude, something that the era itself was embracing. On screen, the two are electric, their chemistry together one of the more effective elements of the film. We want them to be together, and it’s one of the first times in cinema where truly bad people earned our sympathies.

NEXT: That Moment In

Not long after the two meet, even before they’ve introduced themselves, the two walk from Bonnie’s house so he can buy her a cola an talk. It’s a dusty backwater town, with cracked streets and mom & pop shops barely hanging on amid brick store fronts and weathered wooden siding. Bonnie is taken by Clyde’s confidence and his admission to having just got out of jail, the danger in him igniting a passion in her she’s never known.

But she’s also a skeptic, a girl used to being let down, a young woman with few options for escape and as sure as the night sky, believing none will come. But there’s something about this man, a darkness maybe in his eyes, but she isn’t sold on his story, or more so, wants to test him on the truth. Bonnie Parker isn’t a follower, but she wants someone to show her the way, and with Barrow, possibilities seem open.

Still though, she wants to be sure, and so she questions him on his past, calling him a faker about his confession to be a robber. She does this with a sass that feels both telling of her age and almost predatory as she presses him to be the man she wants–no, needs–him to be.

Emboldened by her trickery and his own need for her to be taken by him, Clyde looks on her with a matchstick tight between his teeth, a symbol of his fast but tenuous grip on incendiary things, and baited by her taunting, shows his cards. Looking about, he reaches into his coat pocket and reveals his handgun, a .38 Special, Smith & Wesson Model M&P Revolver. Loaded.

Notice how he holds it, one leg up with the barrel fixed at his belt, pointing stiff toward her, an obvious representation of his manhood. She eyes it and then reaches for it, the camera close in, the brief shot almost pornographic in nature, a visual metaphor for the sexual turn-on the coming violence will soon become, a devastating spree of robbery, kidnapping, and murder.

But even still, Bonnie Parker isn’t done yet. Feeling impassioned by the firearm, she proceeds to maintain the power, a balance that seemed tipped directly in his favor. Stroking the barrel with the tips of her lengthy fingers, she puts that manhood once again on the cutting board and vocally doubts his ability to perform, telling him he lacks the gumption to use his weapon.

NEXT: Clyde Has Gumption

What she doesn’t know is that Clyde is in fact a real bad guy and crime is his thing. No poser, he straight out tells her to wait where she is and keep her eyes open. He then walks across the street to the general store and disappears into the shadows within, leaving her breathless on the curb across the way.

A moment later, he rushes out, gun drawn and his other hand stuffed with cash. He then bolts to a parked car, pops the hood and starts it up as she opens the door and they speed off, finally giving each other their names as he fires a single shot into the air to scare off the chasing store clerk.

Struck by the spontaneity and absolutes of what is happening, Bonnie is swept straight into it, the committed action of Clyde, the ease at how it did it, and the pure rush of adrenaline it spiked within her. This was like nothing she’d ever seen. It was real. And it was freedom.

 NEXT: Why It Matters

There’s a lot of great moments in Bonnie and Clyde, a character-driven film that tells a compelling story while keeping us investing in the motivations of the characters. While we see these two dangerous people escalate to their inevitable end, it is this beginning that has particular impact.

With Bonnie especially, there is a sense that she is a tinder box, a woman of ferocity trapped in a cage she seems incapable of breaking free from. There’s a terrific moment earlier while lying on her bed as she peers through the bars of her bed frame where this is perfectly illustrated, herself, banging on them as if hoping it will be enough break her out.

With Clyde, a handsome stranger with an edge of mystery and a streak of danger, she not only realizes that such people do exists, but he is also a way to run away. More importantly though, this moment develops the relationship that will come to dominate the two on that run. Clyde is a reckless criminal and Bonnie is an untapped wellspring of motivation. The bond they form in this early part of the film establishes that Bonnie is as much a participant in the coming adventure as she is a creative force behind it. The sexual overtones, which play out significantly throughout begin here, rather strongly with this little exchange that is designed make him prove his worth as a robber. It’s not that Clyde is weak, it’s that Clyde is weak with Bonnie.

Women in control have long been a special part of cinema, but the power that Bonnie has here was the start of a new kind of femme fatale in the movies, one that would have influence on a number of dangerous blonde bombshells in many films, including Sharon Stone‘s celebrated turn as Catherine Tramell of Basic Instinct (1992).

Penn’s brilliant direction of this and so many other moments in Bonnie and Clyde highlight the dynamic as well. Watch how Bonnie is framed in this entire sequence, dominated by close-ups and then shots that often keep Clyde behind her, watching with curiosity, himself falling under her dizzying spell, realizing she is as much trouble as she is beautiful.

The moment ends is a frenzy of chaos as they leap into a stolen car and flee, the two now bound by an act that will come to define their very short but illicit and infamous career. It’s a fantastic scene that still resonates, heated and charged by two perfectly cast actors and a director who knew just what to do to make them shine. Bonnie and Clyde meet is a great movie moment.