I may have been introduced to Bonnie and Clyde in a college film-lit class. Back then, I was close in age to where my students are now.  Most critics criticized this film for its excessive violence, but my college professor celebrated it as a New Wave masterpiece. I was too young and inexperienced to truly understand either what my professor said or what I saw on the screen, but that didn’t stop me from loving Bonnie and Clyde.  Forty years later, it’s my favorite movie,  I still talk about it, and BRAVO to me, some of my students write and research it for their papers about the Great Depression. I’m still in love with Faye Dunaway, and I probably will always love Warren Beatty.  In the final moments of the movie, in the back of their car, on rainy afternoon, when Bonnie reads her poem she just wrote for Clyde, my heart EXPLODES into a million pieces every time.

I don’t teach film class, but I hope for my English composition students to reach back into their own personal vaults for a historic movie to research.  What’s the story behind the story?  What is there to learn?  This semester, I’m reading student papers on Frida Kaho’s Sexuality, the Sinking of the Titanic, Jackie Robinson’s Pushback on Jim Crow.  Among other things, I ask my students to select and summarize a scene in their movies to represent historical perspective.   Bonnie and Clyde were real-life figures.  In my opinion, Bonnie’s reading of her poem captures the brutal existence of the Great Depression.   When the stock market crashed in 1929, cities were hard hit and rural farm areas suffered.  Suddenly, unemployment rose to over sixty percent and banks were foreclosing on over a third of all publicly owned farm property.  People were literally out in the street begging.  Clyde’s family had lost their home; they slept with other destitute families under a bridge that crossed the Trinity River.  Around this time, Bonnie was top student in her high school, but with NO future.  She dropped out at age 15 to marry a thug from her neighborhood; one year later, he was gone, and she was working as a part-time waitress and prostitute.   These facts don’t make it into the movie — The Trinity River was like a sewage dump for Dallas.  Every night its stench wafted through the Barrow campground.  Bonnie lived in a manufacturing zone called Cement City.  Air pollution made it hard to breathe.  Industrial fumes stuck to her hair and clothes. 

Under these conditions, something clicked the first time Bonnie and Clyde met.  They needed each other.  Clyde was already stealing cars, and Bonnie was turning tricks.  One thing led to another, and they teamed up to live the Gangstah life.  They began robbing gas stations and small banks.   Once their pictures appeared in the newspaper headlines, they became full-time fugitives.  They lived their lives on the run, never staying in one place for more than one night for fear of being recognized and ratted out. Their adventures were desperate and lonely.  They had no friends.  They lost all contact with their families.  All they had was each other.  (I LOVE this movie!)

Bonnie’s recitation of her poem in the film is most interesting to me, for I know what happens right after. I read about it Bonnie and Clyde: The Making of a Legend.  Bonnie and Clyde had quickly become Living Folk Heroes during their two-year crime spree. I believe much of their legend grows form the way they dressed and talked.  The remaking and re-telling of their stories adds glamour and attitude.  It’s said that they robbed from the rich and they gave to the poor.  They challenged authority.  While most Americans their age could barely afford food or shelter, Bonnie and Clyde dressed in high fashion and traveled in late-model V8 Fords.  They were the darlings of the  newspapers.  People wrote songs about them.  Not everyone, however, thought  Bonnie and Clyde were so cool.  The Texas Rangers, F.B.I. and Dallas Police had  acted on a tip that Bonnie and Clyde were to travel a specific Louisiana backroad at a specific  time.  They lied in  wait with military-style weapons.  This time, they were not going to let Bonnie and Clyde get away alive. 

Right before this final ambush, the real Bonnie and Clyde drove back to Texas to  see their families.  They had to arrange a secret picnic in a far-out-of-the-way forest where no one would  see them.  After all, they were being chased by the Texas Rangers, F.B.I, and local Dallas Police Force.  These two were all about the family  They  never forgot where they came from.  At the picnic, Bonnie had the chance to hug her sister and slip her this poem.  Here is part of it that Faye read in the backseat of the Ford:  Some day they'll go down together / They'll bury them side by side / To few it'll be grief / To the law it will be a relief  /  But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.

The sisters would never see each other again.  Law Enforcement were able to arrange a military style ambush along side a remote Louisiana backroad.  In the early morning hours they assembled shotguns, automatic rifles and pistols.  When they heard Bonnie and Clyde barreling down the road in a gray Ford V-8, they were ready.  Bonnie and Clyde never saw it coming. Part of Clyde’s skull was blown off.  He never was able to fire in return. When police moved in to investigate, one of them said Bonnie looked like a pile of bloody rags.

This week,  we start brainstorming research topics for our Spring Semester 2022 class.  Students will create and share lists of their ideas.   Racism in the Deep South; The Evil of the Holocaust;  The Origins of Gay Rights Movement.   My film glamorizes Bonnie and Clyde, for Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are Hollywood Superstars. They will always be idolized and remembered by their faithful fans.  But,  Bonnie and Clyde had nobody.  The closer they came to human contact or friendly conversation, the more dangerous their lives became. Bonnie and Clyde is more than romance.  It’s about hard times of the Great Depression. I remember where I was when I first saw this movie. My appreciation for it has only grown over 50 years.  Here in Mexicali, I have a shelf devoted to Bonnie and Clyde books.   Will my student research transpose into fresh insight and desire to learn more?  Will they still talk about their topic's historical importance in 50 years.   Time will tell.  

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Below I share my scene from the move:  Bonnie and Clyde were 23 and 25 years old when they died.  They were just kids!