Film of the decade

Pure cinema and the definitive Zeitgeist movie of its era, Arthur Penn's astonishing Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was produced by …

Pure cinema and the definitive Zeitgeist movie of its era, Arthur Penn's astonishing Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was produced by the 30-year-old Warren Beatty, who starred in it with Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman, both in career-making performances. Its impeccable period detail precisely captured its 1930s setting during the Depression, as gangsters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow robbed one bank after another and gloried in their media and folklore celebrity. However, it was infused with an acute 1960s sensibility that reflected the souring of the American Dream and the deep disillusionment brought on by the Kennedy assassination. Consequently, it was deliberately unsettling in its abrupt cuts from rollicking humour to shocking violence, culminating as its protagonists are riddled with bullets in eerie, lingering slow-motion.