BONNIE AND CLYDE Revisited

Geoff Boucher's "Remembering Bonnie and Clyde" in the Los Angeles Times:

"'I remember a creative impatience by almost everyone involved," [Warren] Beatty said, "and there was so much energy on the screen.' The really interesting thing, though, was how audiences latched onto Bonnie and Clyde as a flexible symbol. Already feeling far removed from the Summer of Love, young America embraced it as nihilistic thrill ride and anti-establishment poetry. Many film critics and older viewers, however, seized on it as entertainment-as-evidence, a sign of an amoral society in slide.

"The interest in the film endures and, if any aspect of it does feels dated now, that's primarily a function of so many imitators through the decades. Tuesday, Warner Home Video will release a lavish repackaging of the film that comes with a 36-page hardcover photo book and the new documentary Revolution! The Making of Bonnie and Clyde. Then there's Pictures at a Revolution, the acclaimed new book by Mark Harris that weaves together the history of 1967 best picture Oscar nominees Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night (which won) and The Graduate to show an industry amid sea change."

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Boucher's article also contains interviews with Arthur Penn, Gene Hackman, and Estelle Parsons.