Focus Features

Arthur Penn with Warren Beatty and Faye
Dunaway on the set of Bonnie and Clyde

After the release of Bonnie and Clyde, Andrew Sarris said that the film "confirmed Arthur Penn's position as the American Truffaut." This was because Francois Truffaut was supposed to be the original director of the film. But Penn took the New Wave-isms of the project and Americanized them – in the same way that Clint Eastwood “Americanized” the spaghetti western after his return to the US from working with Sergio Leone on the Dollar films.

Here's what Arthur Penn said to Tom Luddy and David Thomson about how he worked with the scriptwriters Robert Benton and David Newman on Americanizing the script:

"For instance, there was a very complicated relationship with C.W. Moss – a sexual triangle. I said, 'No, we've got to be dealing with more bucolic folk. They can't be that sophisticated.' If they're that sophisticated, then all the rest of their perception of 'Well, the banks foreclosed on us, so that's where the money is, so that's where we're gonna go' – which had to be a kind of ordinariness – could not survive in the face of that kind of sexual sophistication. They agreed once I made my point as strongly as I could, then they did it. Also, C.W. was supposed to be like a six-foot-two football player. I said, 'Oh no. No, no, no. He's got to be a kind of mascot. He's got to be impressed.' When they say, 'We rob banks,' that's just got to take him right out of his life and into another life. Seeing Michael J. Pollard try to park the car, it's funnier than a six-foot-two guy."

Asked about what Bonnie and Clyde meant to him, Penn had this to say:

Dunaway and Penn strike a pose as the
doomed outlaws

"Well, not least of all, it gave me a kind of 'clout' in the movie business. Second, the fact we were able just to go off and make it. Jack Warner was selling the studio at that point, so there was no real supervision. So we went off as a tight, autonomous little unit down to Dallas – just Warren Beatty, me and the actors and the production crew - and made a movie, and the movie we wanted to make. Third, and I think most profound, it was the first time I felt I was able to put the medium to work as a narrative device. The film medium became part of the play. That's most conspicuous, of course, in the last scene, the slow-motion shoot-out. By now, that's a hopeless cliché; but at its time, and still even now, I will claim that it has not been used as appropriately, or with such visual interest. As I said at the time, it's a spastic ballet. I had one of those epiphanies where I saw that scene as it was going to come out. We were making a legendary leap – this is William Tell, Robin Hood – from what probably took place. They were a couple of fairly squalid types, but we took the assumption that their story would resonate for the 1960s. We weren't deliberate or prescient, but I did feel there was something anti-establishment about them as figures that really did matter at the time. That was an extraordinarily irreverent time - defying the draft! So I had a sense of it, but not to the degree that the film registered on audiences."

The “clout” that Bonnie and Clyde gave Penn produced a run of riveting pictures reflecting the dark night of an America that was experiencing war in Vietnam and assassinations at home.

As Tom Luddy and David Thomson said in their introduction to their interview with Penn:

“Time and again, Arthur Penn told a gripping story and let us know that the movies were a way of uncovering our deepest feelings about our world. His narratives were so grave, so beautiful, so tragic. It is so long since we have had an inescapable tragedian among American directors. Succeeding generations have been too cool for that depth of expression. Yet it has to be said that Penn's pictures were also full of humour, anarchy, passion and hope.”

Extract from Projections 4: Film-Makers on Film-Making edited by John Boorman, Tom Luddy, David Thomson and Walter Donohue (Faber & Faber, 1995).

Essential Viewing: The Left-Handed Gun [Buy], The Miracle Worker [Buy], The Chase [Buy], Bonnie and Clyde [Buy], Alice's Restaurant [Buy], Little Big Man [Buy], Night Moves [Buy], The Missouri Breaks [Buy], Four Friends [Buy]. 

Arthur Penn with Warren Beatty and Faye
Dunaway on the set of Bonnie and Clyde

After the release of Bonnie and Clyde, Andrew Sarris said that the film "confirmed Arthur Penn's position as the American Truffaut." This was because Francois Truffaut was supposed to be the original director of the film. But Penn took the New Wave-isms of the project and Americanized them – in the same way that Clint Eastwood “Americanized” the spaghetti western after his return to the US from working with Sergio Leone on the Dollar films.

Here's what Arthur Penn said to Tom Luddy and David Thomson about how he worked with the scriptwriters Robert Benton and David Newman on Americanizing the script:

"For instance, there was a very complicated relationship with C.W. Moss – a sexual triangle. I said, 'No, we've got to be dealing with more bucolic folk. They can't be that sophisticated.' If they're that sophisticated, then all the rest of their perception of 'Well, the banks foreclosed on us, so that's where the money is, so that's where we're gonna go' – which had to be a kind of ordinariness – could not survive in the face of that kind of sexual sophistication. They agreed once I made my point as strongly as I could, then they did it. Also, C.W. was supposed to be like a six-foot-two football player. I said, 'Oh no. No, no, no. He's got to be a kind of mascot. He's got to be impressed.' When they say, 'We rob banks,' that's just got to take him right out of his life and into another life. Seeing Michael J. Pollard try to park the car, it's funnier than a six-foot-two guy."

Asked about what Bonnie and Clyde meant to him, Penn had this to say:

Dunaway and Penn strike a pose as the
doomed outlaws

"Well, not least of all, it gave me a kind of 'clout' in the movie business. Second, the fact we were able just to go off and make it. Jack Warner was selling the studio at that point, so there was no real supervision. So we went off as a tight, autonomous little unit down to Dallas – just Warren Beatty, me and the actors and the production crew - and made a movie, and the movie we wanted to make. Third, and I think most profound, it was the first time I felt I was able to put the medium to work as a narrative device. The film medium became part of the play. That's most conspicuous, of course, in the last scene, the slow-motion shoot-out. By now, that's a hopeless cliché; but at its time, and still even now, I will claim that it has not been used as appropriately, or with such visual interest. As I said at the time, it's a spastic ballet. I had one of those epiphanies where I saw that scene as it was going to come out. We were making a legendary leap – this is William Tell, Robin Hood – from what probably took place. They were a couple of fairly squalid types, but we took the assumption that their story would resonate for the 1960s. We weren't deliberate or prescient, but I did feel there was something anti-establishment about them as figures that really did matter at the time. That was an extraordinarily irreverent time - defying the draft! So I had a sense of it, but not to the degree that the film registered on audiences."

The “clout” that Bonnie and Clyde gave Penn produced a run of riveting pictures reflecting the dark night of an America that was experiencing war in Vietnam and assassinations at home.

As Tom Luddy and David Thomson said in their introduction to their interview with Penn:

“Time and again, Arthur Penn told a gripping story and let us know that the movies were a way of uncovering our deepest feelings about our world. His narratives were so grave, so beautiful, so tragic. It is so long since we have had an inescapable tragedian among American directors. Succeeding generations have been too cool for that depth of expression. Yet it has to be said that Penn's pictures were also full of humour, anarchy, passion and hope.”

Extract from Projections 4: Film-Makers on Film-Making edited by John Boorman, Tom Luddy, David Thomson and Walter Donohue (Faber & Faber, 1995).

Essential Viewing: The Left-Handed Gun [Buy], The Miracle Worker [Buy], The Chase [Buy], Bonnie and Clyde [Buy], Alice's Restaurant [Buy], Little Big Man [Buy], Night Moves [Buy], The Missouri Breaks [Buy], Four Friends [Buy].