Arthur Penn, Bonnie And Clyde and Bosley Crowther

Arthur Penn passed away yesterday at the age of 88. He was renowned director of stage and screen, but he will always be remembered for his film Bonnie and Clyde. It was not a film he originally wanted to make, but when he decided to do it, he was determined that the violence inherit in the story would not be disguised in some artful way. He wanted the film to reflect the violence in society and what people saw on the news every night coming from Vietnam.


His legacy is that he ended up making a film that completely mirrored the times he lived in; youth in rebellion, the old ways under siege, and violence erupting all over. Bonnie and Clyde glorified the outsiders and made the viewer sympathize with the criminals. It intertwined sex and violence in a way that had never been done before. The films tagline was:

They're young.....they're in love......and they kill people.

The success of the film allowed other movie makers to push the boundaries on what could be shown in film. Bonnie and Clyde ushered in the era of New Hollywood or the American New Wave, where the director was seen as an auteur and film and art combined in unique ways. It was also instrumental igniting a fire in the world of film criticism that would cause the most famous film critics career to go down in flames.

The film was seen as a threat to the establishment and no one shouted this louder than New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther. Crowther had been film critic for the Times since 1940. He was a prolific and  influential American film critic. His reviews could make or break the career of actors, writers and directors. He was known to champion foreign films, especially ones from the French new wave. But by the 1960's he was perceived to be losing touch modern movies. He panned Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Lawrence Of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen, but fawned all over Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra. In his review of The Dirty Dozen, released the same year, he wrote:



 "A raw and preposterous glorification of criminal soldiers." "a spirit of hooliganism that is brazenly antisocial, to say the least; a studied indulgence of sadism that is morbid and disgusting beyond words."


But he saved his worst for Bonnie and Clyde:


"It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy moronic pair as though they were full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cut ups in Thoroughly Modern Millie." 


"Such ridiculous, camp-tinctured travesties of the kind of people these desperadoes were and of the way people lived in the dusty Southwest back in those barren years might be passed off as candidly commercial movie comedy, nothing more, if the film weren’t reddened with blotches of violence of the most grisly sort... This blending of farce with brutal killings is as pointless as it is lacking in taste, since it makes no valid commentary upon the already travestied truth. And it leaves an astonished critic wondering just what purpose Mr Penn and Mr Beatty think they serve with this strangely antique, sentimental claptrap."




Crowther was not the only critic to pan the film. Joseph Morgenstern at Newsweek called it a film for morons. And the critic at Variety found it to be uneven. Time magazine gave the film a negative review. But audiences loved in and younger critics responded to the film in a much more positive manner. A young Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, and Pauline Kael, just starting out at the New Yorker raved about the film. Newsweek and Time magazine gave the film a second look and retracted their early negative reviews.

Crowther would not change his mind. He printed further negative reviews of the film. He commented:

"Evidently, there are people, including some critics, who feel that the deliberately buffoonized picture achieves some sort of meaningful statement for the times we live in."

Crowther quoted from 1930's crime reports to show that the movie distorted the facts about Bonnie and Clyde. He wrote three negative reviews of the film, disparaged it letter To The editor comments and even made negative remarks about it in other film reviews. But Crowley's one man war would not stop the film from being recognized as one of the best films of 1967. In 1968, after 27 years, The new York Times replaced Crowther as their primary film critic. His attacks on Bonnie and Clyde had showed him to be out of touch and unable to relate to current cinema.

His leaving the Times signified a "changing of the guard" in the world of film criticism, just as Bonnie and Clyde ushered in a new era of film making.

In retrospect was Bosley Crowther's campaign against the violence in Bonnie and Clyde, and the increase in violence in films in general, wrong headed? He was tilting at windmills, since nothing could stop the new wave of American cinema that was coming, but was he so wrong to warn against the blatant use of gratuitous sex and violence in films, just to shock and awe. That films should not make committing acts of violence and mayhem against others look like so much fun? Maybe he knew something the other critics didn't.

Arthur Penn would go on to direct Little Big Man, Missouri Breaks and Night Moves among others, but he would never have another hit as big as Bonnie and Clyde. Bosley Crowther worked as an "executive consultant" before retiring. He passed away in 1981