AWARDS & HONORS
Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for 10 Oscars®: Best
Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Warren Beatty), Best Actress (Faye
Dunaway), Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard), Best
Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons), Best Original Screenplay, Best
Cinematography and Best Costuming. Only Parsons and cinematographer
Burnett Guffey won.
David Newman and Robert Benton won Best Screenplay awards from the
Writers Guild, the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of
Film Critics.
Gene Hackman was named Best Supporting Actor by the National Society of
Film Critics.
Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard won awards from the British Academy
of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) as Most Promising Newcomers to Leading
Film Roles.
In 1992, Bonnie and Clyde was voted onto the National Film
Registry, earning recognition as a national treasure.
The Critics Corner: BONNIE AND CLYDE
Despite the misgivings of Warner Bros.' top executives and a disastrous
initial release, Bonnie and Clyde became one of the top-grossing films
of its year. With $23 million in rentals, it became the studio's second
highest-grossing film to that time, right behind My Fair
Lady (1964).
"...a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick that treats the hideous
depredations of that sleazy moronic pair as though they were as full of
fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie [1967]."
- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
"...a squalid shoot-'em-up for the moron trade." - Joe Morgenstern's first
review in Newsweek.
"I am sorry to say I consider that review grossly unfair and regrettably
inaccurate. I am sorrier to say I wrote it." - Morgenstern's retraction, a
week later, also in Newsweek.
"How do you make a good movie in this country and not get jumped on?
Bonnie and Clyde is the most exciting American movie since The
Manchurian Candidate [1962]. The audience is alive to it." - Pauline Kael,
The New Yorker.
"A film from which we shall date reputations and innovations in the
American cinema." - Alexander Walker, Evening Standard.
"It works as comedy, as tragedy, as entertainment, as a meditation on the
place of guns and violence in American society" - Roger Ebert, The Great
Movies.
by Frank Miller
Critics' Corner - Bonnie and Clyde - The Critics Corner: BONNIE AND CLYDE
by Frank Miller | March 11, 2010

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