Teaching Film 02: Bonnie and Clyde
Teaching the 1967 film by Arthur Penn, taught with grade 11 students, over about 12 years (ongoing)
When I was offered the chance to build a film course in 2010, I jumped, but I jumped pretty blindly. We adapted the Visual Arts curriculum (Ontario) to create a “locally developed” course for students in grade 11, and for the first year, I basically winged it.
I’d loved movies since I was a kid and I had seen a ton. Then I’d been exposed to next-level films in the mid-90s by my partner, who showed me how to navigate the indie Toronto rental shops organized by director (intimidating after years of Blockbuster and Jumbo). The Coen brothers and Tarantino were in their heyday, and I drank in all the late 90s had to offer. It was a delicious time.
But I didn’t know my history, so I started to delve into the movies that were acknowledged Important Classics. I read Ebert’s fantastic reviews, dove into websites of timelines, and explored. That first year I did my exploring with my class – a great group of hilarious kids, several of whom are still involved in film at different levels. We watched lots of stuff I don’t show anymore, but the best find that year was Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967). I still show it, and it still slays.
What Is It?
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were real life bank robbers during the Great Depression, and folk heroes to the disenfranchised. They robbed a bunch of banks, ran a rampage across several states, and then they were killed.
Why Is It Important?
Bonnie and Clyde is one of a few films that existed in and now demonstrate the huge shift in the 1960s to a new style of movie. It introduced mainstream America to an exciting new style of editing, added depth to character-types, and helped move Hollywood into more truthful storytelling. It empowered directors in a deep way, and had performances by a stellar cast: Warren Beaty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, and a great cameo by Gene Wilder.
Why Is It Worth Teaching?
Want to give kids a framework for current politics, the too-hot culture wars, arguments over standards and the rural/urban divide? How about the boom-bust cycle, housing crisis, and heroes versus anti-heroes? Bonnie and Clyde, baby. Films connect us with other eras in a visceral way, and if you as a teacher are informed, a movie can be a history textbook, let alone a lesson.
Everything Is a Conversation and a Negotiation
I like to keep track of the big ideas I’m teaching, and one of the biggest and most important is the idea that our world is a conversation, a negotiation, of differing approaches to life. It was confusing to me, as a kid, to discover this, as I was taught in certainties (Christianity, democracy, progress, hierarchies, liberal values) and was later stunned to learn that there were other options that were equally valid, and that none of it was actually decided. I would have never guessed that some people didn’t care about the planet, or that women’s rights could be revoked, or that equality wasn’t a totally common goal. I certainly wouldn’t have predicted the assaults on democracy that now seem nearly constant. I think letting kids know as soon as possible that everything is multifaceted is more fair.
I am not advocating total relativism, by the way. Here’s an example of what I mean: we were taught as kids that smoking was dumb and bad for you. So it was a shock to learn that there are some pretty good reasons to smoke: it helped with insecurity, it gave you something to do while waiting for the bus, it helped you meet people. This was valuable information, and since I didn’t have it, I had no counter to it and no way to weigh the options. Then I smoked for 20 years. I wouldn't advise anyone to smoke cigarettes - it’s dumb and bad for you. But they should know why people do smoke, because smokers are not dumb, and not bad. It enables better decision-making. I would call that lesson Smoking vs. Not Smoking. I’ll use that framework here.
Art vs. Money
Film as an art form is too expensive to make without consideration for finances, as much as I wish it were otherwise. Film-making generally involves investors, and when artists take money from investors, they are no longer completely in charge. All of film history can be viewed through this lens, and it swings like a pendulum across eras, with one or the other dominating, with one or the other suffering or flourishing. I usually explain this as Producers vs. Directors, which is basically true if a little simplified.
The Golden Age vs. New Hollywood
The 1960s followed 30 years of the so-called Golden Age of Film, in which giant movie factories called studios churned out an endless chain of movies - a movie a week, each, at the era’s peak. (More about studios another time.) The 60s, most of us know, was an era of change, in which a lot of staid traditions were overturned by the Baby Boomers (when they were cool). The studio system had become stale and unimaginative and had tried but not succeeded to battle the industrial challenge of television. Something new was needed.
In 1965 the producers were aware they were losing, and had no idea how to proceed, but young directors did, as they’d been bathing in French New Wave films and in the American counterculture. They were given opportunities to try, and leeway to be bold, and presto-changeo, their films were successful. Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first of these. (Easy Rider was more on-the-nose countercultural, but I don’t love it. Worth seeing, but I don’t show it in class.) Afterwards, American films entered a brilliant, gorgeous (and short) era of director-led movies. Between 1967 and 1980, many incredible classics were birthed (off the top of my head):
Bonnie and Clyde
A Clockwork Orange
Dog Day Afternoon
The Conversation
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Woman Under the Influence
Apocalypse Now
The Deer Hunter
Jaws
The Wild Bunch
The Godfather
Star Wars
Taxi Driver
Midnight Cowboy
The Graduate
Raging Bull
To learn more about this era, check out Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, from the BBC, available on YouTube (for now). (More on copyright and internet ephemerality, and solutions, in a future article here.)
The Seventies vs. the Eighties
This heyday era would end after Jaws and Star Wars sparked the blockbuster obsession, reinvigorated the studios and the genre film, and led to the films of the 1980s - pretty plastic, if classic in a different way. (ET, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, etc.) More on the 80s sometime later.
The Hays Code vs. the Rating System
It is really fun to teach about the Hays Code, but not super-fun to watch a lot of the films from that era (pace matters - more below). Best to teach it from its end-side (I will discuss why I think history should be taught backwards in a future article). Students will be aware of the American culture wars from their own lives, and it’s fun to teach them its history.
Urban vs. Rural
Movies are shown to all Americans, but the money and the ideas and the people come from Urban America and frequently and predictably freak out Rural America.
Hollywood is urban and coastal, and is an artist town. Artists are always more adventurous than regular citizens, on the whole. Artists are freer thinking about sex and drugs and race and gender, and they push boundaries. Occasionally (i.e., right now), rural people get triggered by the ideas in urban art, and they push back.
Around the 30s, rural America was disgusted by a lot of cultural developments that emanated from Hollywood, and boycotts and church-led protests began to get hot. Hollywood, being clever, decided to create a code for behaviour that would appease them before they got shut down entirely. This was the Hays Code.
Conservatives vs. Art
You can draw connections between this negotiation and other instances of it: the same exact story with comic books in the late 1940s, when that iconic Comics Code was adopted and comics retreated into childish pap for a couple decades. Hip hop and heavy metal music pushed the large-haired, ridiculously named Tipper Gore to decry and then label rock and rap records in the 1980s by creating the Parents Music Resource Center. In the 1990s the video games industry, having learned these lessons, adopted ratings systems before they were demanded, safely ensuring that kids and parents could collectively pretend standards were being protected even though they were mostly not. Slick move! A great conversation can be had about age-appropriate content. Everybody’s got an opinion about that.
The Hays Code itself is a little hilarious and fun to discuss. A few examples:
Gore (not Tipper, the gooey blood stuff) could not be shown. (NB. Gorey movies just went underground and created the B-movie scene.)
Criminals couldn’t win or profit from crime.
Married adults had to sleep in separate beds onscreen.
In the 1960s, the infantilizing Hays Code was replaced with a much better notion: some movies are for adults, and some movies are for children. An elegant solution!
France vs. America
Film was invented and developed simultaneously in France and the USA, approximately 120 years ago. I focus on Hollywood in my grade 11 film course, because it’s what they’re already familiar with, and the films are in English. (I’m in Canada, where the only significant film industry currently is in Quebec; we study Canadian films in the grade 12 course.)
Just as Britain reinvigorated rock and roll in the 1960s, France reinvigorated film after WW2 with a youthfully reckless, bold new style. The former was called the British Invasion. The latter, the French New Wave.
Bonnie and Clyde borrowed techniques and attitudes from the French New Wave, as its creators had educated themselves in Arthouse Theatres in the 50s. Dede Allen, editor of Bonnie and Clyde, explained in the documentary The Cutting Edge that although she was given credit for an intense, emotionally driven cutting style, she had learned it in the Arthouses, and it had just been an obvious next step. Audiences learn how to watch film from watching film and, 60 years in, she knew they were sophisticated enough to comprehend a newer cutting style.
People vs. Banks
I started teaching this film shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, which was led by a housing meltdown. The film is set in the early 1930s, during the Great Depression. Banks had made large numbers of rural Americans homeless and had decimated the family farm after the 1929 stock market crash, and Bonnie and Clyde gives these people screen time – and explains why Clyde’s smiling one-liner “We rob banks!” was/is so charming. Occupy Wall Street was happening during my first film class, and Bonnie and Clyde gave us lots of time to discuss it and the issues it contained. Nothing has improved since then – the rich/poor divide has only grown – and so it still makes for good conversation fuel.
The Sixties vs. the Thirties
A film from the late 1960s already feels a long time ago for kids; one set in the 1930s is even farther away. Bonnie and Clyde gives kids a chance to see that past: the cars, the clothes, the conversations. The highways the crew escape on are unpaved roads, and the chase scenes are very funny for it.
The bluegrass music of Flatt and Scruggs - specifically “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” - accompany each chase, and some of your kids will recognize this convention from the Simpsons. It’s a good opportunity to look at bluegrass if you like music history.
Slow vs. Fast
As mentioned above, pace matters. A lot. As people have become more adept at reading film, the pace of filmic storytelling has gotten faster and faster. Don’t be shamed by this, and don’t shame your kids over it. Things change. I tend to empower kids, or try to, by explaining how amazingly talented they are at reading movies. Bonnie and Clyde will push them, pace-wise, and it’s best to acknowledge this and own it early on.
Tell them how in earlier eras, people seeing a train coming towards an audience might leap out of the way, but they never would; how 20 years later, a page-a-day calendar would be blown by a fan to indicate time passing, but kids now can just usually intuit this from other subtle cues. Show them the bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark where a plane traces a line on a map to show we’re going to Israel and explain that this would happen now in a cut that takes a fraction of a second.
I tell my students that even I, a modern youngish man lol, found Transformers impossible to comprehend, even though I’d been steeped in rock videos as a boy. Tell them that Martin Scorcese has confessed to his inability to watch a lot of modern films because they’re too fast. People get old, and they tend to stick with the artistic styles of their youth. Tell them that there isn’t anything wrong with this, to expect it. Ask them to ponder what their own kids will one day enjoy.
Then you can ask them to extend this backwards, and at least tolerate how freaking slow old movies are.
Hangups vs. Traumas
Teens now are better informed about many things, especially those things that were culturally taboo prior to Tik Tok. Clyde Barrow and his romantic relationship with Bonnie Parker is groundbreakingly (for 1967) real, and nearly completely unspoken.
Clyde is sexually traumatized. I’ve read online that he was raped in jail (he has just been released as the film begins) but am not certain of it. He definitely struggles with expectations of “manliness.”
With his brother, he pretends to be a player and uncomfortably jokes about what a “piece” Bonnie is, but he behaves differently with her. Their relationship is deep and powerful, but he is “no lover boy.” Her sexual frustration at his inability to perform is played out with amazing power mostly in Faye Dunaway’s incredible facial expressions – and in some of his driving. In the scene below, watch him repeatedly almost drive off the road in reaction to her excitement after their first robbery. Beatty’s own expressions convey Clyde’s deep shame and embarrassment.
These scenes can be embarrassing to discuss, but my students tend to get it and respond to it (and the ones who don’t just ignore it) – and you don’t need to be explicit either. The film tells the story with, I think, breathtaking subtlety. When Bonnie finally “tells Clyde’s story” for him, making him real and heroic, she frees him. They celebrate by finally consummating their love in a grassy field (pre-Lyme disease, obviously) and the act is implied very cutely with a pan away to the newspaper flying away on the wind – just like Clyde’s heart.
Cops vs. Robbers vs. Reporters vs. Banks
Who do the police work for? How do journalists and news organizations create news? These are certainly hot topics right now, as homeless COVID encampments are cleared by cops in our cities, as the RCMP arrests journalists and violate Indigenous efforts to protect the environment on behalf of oil companies – examples are plentiful and there will be more recent ones to discuss by the time you teach this movie.
The police in this film are not portrayed as villains and the Barrow Gang are not displayed as innocent freedom fighters. But the various interests involved in this story are revealed pretty clearly and the cops are shown as driven by ego (especially the humiliated Texas Ranger Frank Hamer), and the whole situation is fuelled by sensationally inaccurate and even fictitious news reporting. Well worth talking about. You don’t need to take a side, and you don’t have to pretend to be neutral.
Conversations vs. Lectures
I try hard to convey to my students that movies are not propaganda, not guides for life, but reflections and stories about life. But since film is such an impactful medium, the question of “Should it be shown?” always arises. I try to let that be a question to discuss, and not a lesson to be taught. That being said, let’s talk about violence.
The violence in this film is very, very interesting. Initially, Clyde is profoundly naïve about the violence of robbery, and in a shocking early scene he is deeply hurt when a storeowner tries to stop him, mid-robbery.
Later, his cavalier bank robbery, shown as charming and sometimes funny, goes wrong when his dopey getaway driver decides to parallel park and gets stuck between two other cars. The scene ramps up the tension and uncomfortable humour to a peak – and then Clyde shoots a reacting banker right in the face. The contrast in moods is powerful, and we are disabused entirely of the innocence and fairness of the protagonists.
The violent deaths of the protagonists are harrowing and overmuch, and beg the interesting question: why wouldn’t you show it as ultraviolent? Photos of the Barrow Gang’s car will demonstrate the hundreds of bullets used by the police. Why so many? A great question for discussion.
The Beginning and the Ending
The film starts off with a very effective invitation into a time machine: credits are interspersed with a slideshow (with slide projector sound effects) showing stark photos of the era we’ll be entering. Each photo is shown for just-less-time than is needed to comprehend it fully, which causes us to lean right in, hungry to absorb. Sometimes I point this out, but more often I just watch it happen. It is a fantastic device.
The ending of the film is famous and unforgettable. Fooled finally by the police, with help from a self-interested betrayer, the two lovers are given tiny moments to notice birds in flight, to look at each other, and then they are absolutely riddled with bullets from a dozen concealed guns. They are shot and shot and shot, their bodies dancing horribly under the impacts long after they are dead. The cops and witnesses are given a full minute of silent reactions, as Hays era victors/vengeful cowards, and then the screen goes black. The End.
In that first film class, that experimental year, there was a moment of dead silence, and then hot-spirited Talya stood up in the back of the room and hollered angrily: “THAT’S fucking BULLSHIT!”
I barked a laugh, even as I flinched at the idea my principal might be walking by in the hall. “Well, it’s something…” I said and dismissed the kids for the day. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” They filed out pretty much silently, a couple of kids making wide eyes at me, others shaking their heads.
A great lesson. A great film. Take the opportunity to explore and teach this film. Bonnie and Clyde is unforgettable.
Fun Film Stuff
Busby Berkeley Films
After Clyde shoots the banker in the parallel-parking debacle, the gang hides out and processes in a darkened movie theatre, as Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers plays ironically on the screen, with “We’re in the Money” playing on the soundtrack. It’s worth a bit of time to stop and show some of the incredibly choreographed Berkeley scenes you can find on YouTube. If any kids are smitten by this, they can follow it up with a look at Scarlet Johannsen’s mermaid scene in the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar!
Burn Marks / Cue Marks
Students never forget what a burn mark is after they’ve seen it. If you don’t know, cue marks appear in the top-right corner of films to help projectionists time their switching from one reel of film to another (not an issue with digital film projection). They were often put there with cigarettes – which were in everybody’s mouth all day, back in the day. The copy of Bonnie and Clyde I have features clear burn marks at a couple of points, and I charge students with looking for it.
Continuity Errors
In my experience continuity errors amuse the hell out of kids. They draw attention to the generally invisible fact of the film being a construction, in a fun post-modern way, and thrill detail-oriented nerd kids.
After the scene in the car when the band of bandits eat donuts, pause the film and introduce the concept (and stand back as your geeks explain the airplane in the sky in Troy, and seventeen other ones you won’t have heard of). Show them that these “fails” are a regular section on iMDB pages, and there are zillions of YouTube videos about them. Certain kids will be totally tickled.
Then rewind and ask them to watch Blanche’s donut through the scene. Show it a couple times. Then point it out for the kids who need it: her donut reappears after she’s taken a bite out of it. It’s a fun reminder, as well, of the fact that scenes are composed out of a variety of takes and are not simply filmed performances shown in order. It’s a useful little lesson.
Squibs
Squibs are those little bags of fake blood used to show a character getting shot. Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first films to use them - and they used a lot.
Independent Study Ideas
I like to suggest areas kids can explore on their own. Sometimes they’re assignments, sometimes just ideas - depending on what you need and who your students are.
True Crime is a huge genre. Explore.
The American-Christian movie scene is currently growing. Explore.
Bonnie and Clyde were real people. Explore.
There are other versions of the story of Bonnie and Clyde. Explore.
The criteria for ratings changes over time and in different places. Explore.
Finally, a big lesson that should continue through the course: There’s a job for almost everybody in the film industry.
It’s fun to help kids see the almost unlimited number of ways they could personally get involved in the film industry, if they want. I don’t know if projectionist is still a job, but maybe. Certainly, the kids who dig the squibs might look into practical special effects (as opposed to CGI special effects). After last summer’s tragedy on the set of Rust, your student who loves guns might be interested in the crucial job of armorer.
A kid on the autism spectrum might love the job of continuity editor, which you will have demonstrated is a pretty important job; another detail-oriented kid with strong leadership skills could be the assistant director (AD), scheduling everything and kicking everybody’s ass into gear.
The car nut could provide and manage the old vehicles. And of course, all the other jobs: actors, writers, producers, directors, camera operators, prop designers, makeup artists, caterers and carpenters and electricians and animal wranglers and casting agents – there are a lot of jobs.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy Bonnie and Clyde, and teaching it. If you like this free newsletter, do me a favour and share it with somebody, or repost it on Facebook, or whatever. :)
Peace out -
jep
thatjeffclayton@gmail.com
Other work by jep includes Music of the 80s, an autobiographical musical comic newsletter, and more comics, music, essays and art at misterjep.com
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Great post! It makes me want to watch this movie again (I haven’t seen it for 20+ years).
Here’s a couple of nit-picky things that I thought I would mention which have nothing to do with the main points you make about teaching film (or about "Bonnie and Clyde").
Regarding: “It was confusing to me, as a kid, to discover this, as I was taught in certainties (Christianity, democracy, progress, hierarchies, liberal values) and was later stunned to learn that there were other options that were equally valid, and that none of it was actually decided. I would have never guessed that some people didn’t care about the planet, or that women’s rights could be revoked, or that equality wasn’t a totally common goal. I certainly wouldn’t have predicted the assaults on democracy that now seem nearly constant. I think letting kids know as soon as possible that everything is multifaceted is more fair.”
I didn’t understand the “other options … were equally valid” part of this or what you mean by “none of it was actually decided.” I assume that you mean that there are other “live options” out there that remain politically and socially effective (and in many cases dangerous) despite their intellectual shallowness or incoherence. Socially and politically many things – e.g., democracy, gender equality – are not “actually decided” as a purely practical matter. But it seems that you also think that many views (e.g., anti-democratic, patriarchal, anti-environmental ones) are not really “equally valid” in terms of their merit (truth, morality, justice, etc.).
To pick one example, I certainly agree that the value of democracy is currently being challenged. It can’t be denied – just read the newspaper. But I also think that as a matter of correctness the opposing views are manifestly wrong (just as I think “divine right” theories of absolute monarchy are clearly wrong). The value of democracy, at least relative to authoritarianism or any current contending alternatives, is settled “philosophically,” so to speak, but not practically. Perhaps in the future a better political system will be devised – that very may well be the case. And certainly there are debates – ongoing now, at least in academia – over which version of democracy is the best, most feasible, most stable, etc. But among the existing set of institutional alternatives realized in the world, the family of systems categorized as “liberal democracy” win out over the others (morally, if not politically). Those other candidates – whatever their political and ideological (as opposed to rational) potency – just are not “equally valid.” (Likewise for current political struggles regarding climate change, gender and racial equality, etc.)
“I am not advocating total relativism, by the way. Here’s an example of what I mean: we were taught as kids that smoking was dumb and bad for you. So it was a shock to learn that there are some pretty good reasons to smoke: it helped with insecurity, it gave you something to do while waiting for the bus, it helped you meet people. This was valuable information, and since I didn’t have it, I had no counter to it and no way to weigh the options. Then I smoked for 20 years. I wouldn't advise anyone to smoke cigarettes - it’s dumb and bad for you. But they should know why people do smoke, because smokers are not dumb, and not bad. It enables better decision-making.”
Sorry to nit-pick even more, but I think that what you describe in this paragraph has nothing to do with “relativism.” You simply are pointing out that when presented with an “anti-smoking” message as a child you were not presented with information about why (for some people) there are reasons to smoke (maybe not great ones, but ones that show that smoking isn’t wholly irrational). That’s incomplete information not “relativism.” A “relativist” view would be something like: “whether smoking is good or bad is relative to the person/society/culture/etc.” Roughly speaking, relativism is the view that whether x is true/false (or good/bad) is determined by different standards (those of different individuals or cultures or whatever). Simple relativism is an incoherent view – although it’s widely held by first-year undergraduate “liberals,” anyone who reflects on the nature of truth or morality rejects it for being incoherent and self-refuting. (There are more sophisticated versions of relativism or quasi-relativism. I think they’re wrong, but those versions are not what most people mean when they refer to “relativism.”)
Sorry for the ramble, but the main point is that you can be 100% opposed to any form of relativism and still think people have different perspectives, amounts and kinds of information, and so forth. And that it’s worth delving into the complexity of issues, important to be sensitive to your fallibility (some of your current beliefs are certainly wrong), and so forth. All that is compatible with believing that many claims are either true or false (or that certain moral principles are correct and others incorrect, etc.). Not everything is a matter of “taste.” (E.g., whether coffee is “good” or “bad” depends on the individual, whether genocide is “good” or “bad” does not.)
To tie this all back to pedagogy, I sometimes worry in my own teaching that pointing out the complexity of certain questions – and the intractability of many social and political conflicts – encourages a kind of resignation or defeatism among some (many?) students. They think: “If it’s all so complex and everything is ‘relative’ then there’s no point in trying to figure out what’s true or correct or just!” That kind of response drives me nuts and so I try to be wary of how I teach complex issues. I try to cut off the simple “relativism” or “subjectivism” options as much as possible, both for pedagogic reasons and because I think those views also are both wrong and socially corrosive (as they can engender cynicism and disengagement). At the same time, I don’t want to come across as dogmatic. It’s a tough needle to thread.