Great Scene: “Bonnie and Clyde”

The famous — and bloody — ending of the groundbreaking 1967 film.

The 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde was one of a handful of films of the late 60s — among them Easy Rider, The Graduate, and MASH — which influenced a shift in Hollywood’s filmmaking focus. Bonnie and Clyde won two Oscars and was nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay — Written Directly for the Screen.

Plot summary: Bored waitress Bonnie Parker falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, stealing cars and robbing banks.

Written by David Newman & Robert Benton with uncredited writing provided by Robert Towne.

Scene setup: Bonnie and Clyde are out for a joyride unaware there has been a trap set for them by local law enforcement.

Here is the scene from the original script:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

One HUGE difference: Whereas the script says, “We never see Bonnie and Clyde dead,” the movie not only shows their corpses, but also the brutal machine gun assault on the two victims. While the infamous Hays code had lost its grip on what Hollywood could and could not show on screen, the fact director Arthur Penn decided to visualize the bloody shootout in such graphic detail officially marked the end of that era of censorship and opened the door for the gritty realism of movies in the next decade.

Here is a video detailing the impact Bonnie and Clyde had on the Hollywood movie business:

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