Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde Imagery

Bonnie posing for a photograph

Bonnie, as portrayed by Faye Dunaway, is an exceedingly attractive young woman, with a fierce sensuality and model-level good looks. Her beauty and glamor are highlighted in the moment that she poses for a photograph after first meeting Buck and Blanche. In a beret and brandishing a pistol, Bonnie Parker looks more like a French model than a Southern girl on the run from the law. Indeed, Faye Dunaway's fashion in the film was very influential to 1960s audiences, and the beret came back into style after the release of the film.

The Final Shootout

The final moments of the film, in which Bonnie and Clyde are brutally gunned down by the authorities, is shocking and disturbing. A flood of machine gun bullets erupt from a nearby bush, and we see the two young criminals writhing in agony as they die a particularly cruel death. The way that the violence is shot, how sustained and straightforward it is, is terrifying, but because Penn takes such an unflinching approach to the image, the violence becomes almost aesthetic. The image of Bonnie and Clyde getting pummeled with bullets shocked audience in 1967 and continues to shock today.

Blanche with bandages over her eyes

In one of the shootouts later in the film, Blanche is shot in the eye and blinded, and we see her later in a room with bandages over the top of her head, obscuring her eyes. This image is a striking and evocative one, in that it shows that there are grave consequences for the misdeeds of the Barrow gang, and that the life of the bank robbers' is not all fun and games as we have been led to believe. The blinded Blanche is a tragic, almost theatrical representation of the cost of the Barrow crimes.

Topless Bonnie

In the very first scene of the film, Bonnie is in her bedroom without a shirt on, and she looks outside to see Clyde stealing her mother's car. When she leans out to window to confront him, she is still shirtless, but her breasts are covered by the frame of the window. This moment shows the viewer early on that the connection between the two criminals is explicitly sexual, and they are each intrigued by one another's sex appeal. It also shows that Bonnie's taste for danger and adventure is entangled with her sexual boldness, her willingness to appear without a shirt before a man she doesn't know.