Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Obscene, Indecent, Immoral, and Offensive 100+ Years of Censored, Banned and Controversial Films (2009): [[w:The New Yorker|the ''New Yorker''; [Pauline Kael; [The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)|The Manchurian Candidate; [w:Nicholas Ray|Nicholas Ray; [They Live by Night|They Live By Night; 1948] If Bonnie and Clyde had a critical cheerleader, it was ]'s ], who reveled in the "contemporary feeling" emanating from the "most excitingly American movie since ], which "brings into the almost frightening public world of-movies things that people have been feeling and saying and writing about." Kael compared the film to the gangster movies and crime dramas of the 1930s and 1940s (like ]'s ] ) to illustrate how the film deviates from the classical Hollywood mode, particularly in terms of its lack of a "secure basis for identification" for the audience, who "are made to feel but are not told how to feel." Kael's point is certainly a valid one. In classical gangster films, we identify with the "bad guy," who lives in a black-and-white, Manichaean world of good vs. evil. While morality dictates that Tommy Powers and Scarface must be eliminated in the end, there is a cloud of moral ambiguity that hovers over Bonnie and Clyde. The film's humor and stylization, particularly early in the film, gives us a window of time to identify with the couple, pledge our allegiance to them, and accept their values. But in the second half of the film, those values are called into question as the film's tone changes from comical to serious and people start to get shot and killed.

Obscene, Indecent, Immoral, and Offensive 100+ Years of Censored, Banned and Controversial Films (2009): [[American; [Crime] In their original treatment for the film, screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman conceived the world of Bonnie and Clyde as a reflection of ] life in the late 1960s: This is a movie about criminals only incidentally. ] in the ’30s was the strange, the exotic, the different. This is a movie about two people, lovers, movers, and operators. They’re "hung up," like many people are today. They moved in odd, unpredictable ways which can be viewed, with an existential eye, as classic . . . . They are not Crooks. They are people, and this film is, in many ways, about what’s going on now.