Bonnie and Clyde

Changing

When someone looks into the history of crime in the United States they see things like Presidential assassinations, bombings, the Mob, and the notorious bank robbers, Bonnie and Clyde. If you ask a person about Bonnie and Clyde and what they thought about the couple most would mention the words "criminals" and "lovers". For the most part they are correct, but what most people don't know, and what the movie Bonnie and Clyde (1967) does a good job of showing, is the background of the infamous couple. In Bonnie and Clyde (1967), director Arthur Penn shows a deeper background of the characters and how they changed throughout the movie.

One obvious change in characteristics would be Bonnie Parker and how she went to a household name in a matter of months. Roger Ebert states, "Bonnie was a gum-chewing waitress and Clyde was a two-bit hood out on parole" (Ebert) At the beginning of the movie she was a waitress at a local diner trying to get out of her small town life, but at the end of the movie she was a highly wanted criminal. After leaving her small town lifestyle, she went through years of robbing banks and running from the cops only to end in death. These are the two extremes of her characteristics and Penn shows the transition very well. She starts off very innocent and then gradually starts to do things like smoking a lot, driving getaway vehicles, shooting at police, robbing banks, and running away from every police officer in the Midwest. A lot of this change in Bonnie is a result from meeting her better half, Clyde Barrow. Clyde's criminal ways slowly started to leak into Bonnies lifestyle.

Blanche, Clyde’s sister-in-law, changes for the sake of her husband. When we first meet her she is very shy and oblivious to everything about crime. She was a known Christian and preacher's daughter who even convinced her husband, Buck Barrow, to turn himself into prison after escaping. At first Buck didn't want Blanche to get involved in all of the crimes...