Bonnie and Clyde: No 11 best crime film of all time

Arthur Penn, 1967

Cath Clarke
Sunday 17 October 2010 11.45 BST

I

t might be the sexiest come-on in film history. Truck-stop waitress Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) has been waiting her whole life for something to happen. Then, one sweltering day she eyes a man – the kind momma warned against – loitering by the car. Liking what she sees, she arranges herself naked at the window, calling out: "Hey boy," in an easy drawl. A cocksure smirk spreads across Clyde Barrow's (Warren Beatty) face. Within minutes she is caressing the shaft of his pistol. Bonnie and Clyde: they consummate their first robbery before formal introductions.

"Who'd want to see the rise and fall of a couple of rats?" asked a studio executive at Warner Brothers, which grudgingly financed the film. In 1967, plenty wanted to watch Bonnie and Clyde stick it to authority. Influenced by New Wavers François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard (both were offered the script before it went to Arthur Penn), this was sex and violence done in the spirit of European arthouse. Dunaway smoulders (enjoying a killer fashion moment in those berets), more than a match for Beatty's strutting, cheap charms. For better or worse, going out convulsing in a hail of bullets never looked this seductively stylish.

THE GUARDIAN

Chinatown / The best crime film of all time

Touch of Evil / No 2 best crime film of all time

Vertigo / No 3 best crime film of all time

Badlands / No 4 best crime film of all time

Rashomon / No 5 best crime film of all time

Double Indemnity / No 6 best crime film of all time

Get Carter / No 7 best crime film of all time

Pulp Fiction / No 8 best crime film of all time

Hidden / No 9 best crime film of all time

Goodfellas / No 10 best crime film of all time

Bonnie and Clyde / No 11 best crime film of all time

The Conversation / No 12 best crime film of all time

Alex Carnevale / Warren Beatty In Love

Warren Beatty In Love

BIOGRAPHY

by ALEX CARNEVALE

If I have a fault in relation to women, it's that I'm too dependent on love. When I'm deeply involved and all is not going well, my creative impulses become somewhat sublimated. I used to think the answer was not to get involved.

Monday, March 28, 2011 at 11:19AM

Warren Beatty was wild about Joan Collins. He was enthusiastic about his relationship with her beyond anything he had sampled before. As Warren's friend Verne O'Hara put it, "Sex drives Joan. She was besotted with him. And he was besotted with her." He defended her acting ability constantly, with his fists if necessary. He also used her for his own ends; suggesting she leave the set of a British adaptation of Sons and Lovers as the cast left for England because the publicity she attracted was more useful to him by his side. She was something in Hollywood, and that was what he wanted to be.

For her part, she was devoted to him, and he even bought an engagement ring for her, a gold beacon surrounded by emeralds and diamonds. In January of 1959, they moved into a tiny studio apartment in the Chateau Marmont.