Bonnie and Clyde is representative of a product produced under the influence of auteurs. While Penn is not an auteur himself, the influence of the style of the French New Wave is evident throughout and utilised to great effect in terms of the realist and unconventional style in comparison to Casablanca.
Realism is drawn largely from the sets, dictating the camera movements and editing choices in order to create a realistic representation of Southern America during the Great Depression. During the sequence in which Clyde looks for Bonnie who wants to go see her mother, the shooting location takes place in a large open crop field where dark shadows can be seen casting over the field. This is a more realistic approach to shooting as Penn can’t control the weather and doesn’t create an artificial environment to remove the shadow from the audiences view. Penn also uses a crane shot when Clyde starts running after Bonnie, making use of the wide open set granted to him whilst choosing to shoot at a certain time of day with small apertures rather than creating artificial lighting conditions, increasing the realism of the scene unlike the approach of Casablanca which was more concerned with making a scene look perfect. This style of filming relates to the influence of the French New Wave as the entirety of the film, other than the driving sequences, was shot on location as opposed to the manufactured set used in the production of Casablanca.
Lessons taken from the French New Wave are evident throughout the film. During the scene in which Bonnie and Clyde are killed, handheld shots are used as they are riddled with bullets and their corpses are surveyed by the Texas ranger. The handheld shots remove fluid movement and therefore contrasts the carefully orchestrated shooting style of Casablanca. Although Penn is experimental in his style, he can’t be called an auteur as many French New Wave directors had already utilised this technique themselves such as Jean-Luc Godard in his 1960 film Breathless.
Similarly to Breathless, Bonnie and Clyde’s two main protagonists are both anti-heroes that go against the law. The audience roots for these characters despite the violent crimes they commit and pity them at their deaths. Typically, Hollywood protagonists such as Rick in Casablanca were portrayed as being the hero of the film and so Bonnie and Clyde diverts away from this idea. Warren Beatty, the actor who played Clyde, was also producer for the film and so had the liberty of greater control, resulting in his influence over the character possibly being given a homosexual reading due to his desire to portray a character different from the typical handsome Hollywood heroes he was used to playing, indicating his influence for being an auteur.
The French New Wave developed the idea that the camera was a tool to take on the expectation of the audience rather than to capture the film with perfection. This is often the case in Bonnie and Clyde, concerning the use of editing techniques to emphasise something to the audience. When they pair meet with Bonnie’s family, the sound is dubbed as a child rolls down a hill, giving the scene a somewhat distant and dreamlike appearance that reflects the distance that the pair are from returning to a normal life. In the final scene, the movements of the couple are in slow motion but the bullets fire at normal speed, emphasising to the audience the amount of shots and heightening the brutality of their deaths. This bloody death wasn’t typical of the time period for Hollywood audiences but could be seen in foreign language films of the time whilst the use of jump cuts make the film jarring for an audience, resonating with the style of filmmaking of Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
Bonnie And Clyde is an expressive Hollywood film with auteur features, inspired by the creative developments of the French New Wave and used to create realism. Elements of film form differs from typical filmmaking style during the Golden Age of Hollywood, adding greater purpose behind each creative decision in order to have an effect on the audience. However, Arthur Penn can not be considered an auteur, taking inspiration from the French New Wave, applying such inspiration to the overall style of Bonnie And Clyde.
Aaron Bruce's Film Studies Blog 