Film review: Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967). Taking its cue from the stylish individualism of the French nouvelle vague, when Bonnie and Clyde was released in 1967, it looked like no other American film released before it. Despite its importance to film history, however, Bonnie and Clyde has also become one of the most overrated American films, burdened as it is now by the excessive mythologizing of overly nostalgic film critics. The gleeful violence and sexuality with which Penn intended to shock audiences is tame by today's standards, thus making Penn's cavalier use of both seem dated instead of subversive. Because style so uniformly usurps substance, Penn only hints at deeper connections a more profound filmmaker could have fleshed out. C