本篇论文是我在大学其中一门课（Post-classical Hollywood）的论文作业大概意思为：分析拉片讨论电影雌雄大盗任意3-5分钟的片段关于使用“新浪潮”电影拍摄技巧从而吸引青少年观众并开启新好莱坞的一个问题，原标题如下：（欢迎讨论，写的不好，勿喷！）

论文原标题：Choose one continuous 3-5 minute sequence in Bonnie and Clyde that in your view illustrates the film’s adoption of “New Wave” stylistic devices and/or its appeal to youth audiences of 1967.

（全篇文章英文，读起来可能比较枯燥难懂，请见谅，如果发现有任何语法或者理论错误请指点出来，文章已经交给教授去修改了。）

The film Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn) was made during the transition from classic to Hollywood renaissance period, the production company was Warner Bros. It inherits the classic Hollywood tradition of good storytelling, but opens up a broader social background for the story. The film packs the cultural core of the 1960s with a story from the 1930s. The anti-cultural movement in which the film was released was influenced by existentialism. In this essay I am going to discuss one of the continuous sequences I chose from the film, to argue that why this film has inspired and adopted the style from the French New Wave film such as Breathless (1960, Jean-Luc Godard) and Shoot the piano player (1960, François Truffaut) in order to fascinate so many audiences, particularly youth.

In the film, Bonnie and Clyde explore life frantically, using robbery to vent their rebellion against the government. They do not believe in the government and doubt the entire society, but they are still in this social system, and they blame themselves for killing employees by mistake. They robbed and drove throughout the US. The car symbolizes the freedom of their bodies. After every theft, they would rob a car, and even Bonnie and Clyde would meet and die in the car. This freedom was destroyed with their death. They are also spiritual wanderers, Clyde's incompetence, Bonnie's boredom and dissatisfaction with the current life, confusion about life, and struggling to find themselves in the wanderings. Death is the foreshadowing of Bonnie and Clyde throughout the movie. Although terrible, for them, this is the ultimate way to escape from emptiness and desolation to live. Therefore, the continuous sequence I chose is the finale scene of the film, it changed Hollywood forever, and it turned into a new page.

In this scene, everything has been revealed, and the ending is not a happy sweet ending as all the audience would think and wanted. Just like Luke Buckmaster has suggested ‘This is the sensational finale to the watershed 1967 crime drama Bonnie and Clyde: a high-voltage, take-no-prisoners sequence that is among the most famous – and most shocking – endings in cinema history.’ (Buckmaster, 2017) The director adopted an anti-climax and tragic, bitter ending to end the movie, which may feel a little unexpected for the audience at that time, but still, the way of dealing with this ending is laid out at the beginning, it busted cinematic taboos, and it is inevitable. The scene shows that criminal Bonnie and Clyde are still at large. The couple smiled and ate and drank, and took a bite of a juicy green pear. When they notice someone trapped on the side of the road, the driver will stop and extend a helping hand. When he got out of the car, a group of frightened birds flew out from the tree across the street, immediately afterwards, the police hiding in the woods attacked the lovers in countless gunshots. They didn't have any precautions. Soon they fell like toys in chaotic gunfire, and their bodies were full of blood. There is no doubt that ‘the film had a profound impact on cinema and popular culture more broadly’ and ‘countless films took cues from it’. (Buckmaster, 2017)

In the sequence, it fascinated me that it pretty simple and quick show to the audience how the gunshot scene happen, how the couple immediately know this is a trap by using the style of “French New Wave”. For example, the use of jump cut in the scene, it was first used in Jean-Luc Godard film Breathless (1960, Jean-Luc Godard), the director himself ‘may not have felt self-confident enough to express the disorder of our times in a clear fashion and with static shots; and he called technical facility to the rescure’ (Graham 2012: 227), it fast telling the story, less or no use of establishment shot as a whole can quickly let the audience get into the story, in the end audience are very satisfied with the story as a whole. In addition, Lanzoni argues that ‘jump cuts were frequently used to ease montage difficulties, which dramatically increased the number of shots in a film. The methods used by young directors were unheard of to this point.’ (Lanzoni 2004: 212) In Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn)when they saw Malclom repair the car in distance and Malclom tried to stop them in the distance as well, the director keep using jump cut to show the reduction of the distance between the two parties and the upcoming unknown conflicts. In the scene three characters has less conversation only a few close up shot and the audience can immediately notice that from actor’s facial expression there is something strange going on. Meanwhile, everything become silence, until birds fly out off the forest, each close-up shot to the three characters and three different feelings (one is curious, one is happy and one is very cautious), soon after Malclom quickly hide under the car, when Clyde realized it was a trap, it was too late, when the director handled this scene, he cleverly used facial close-ups to both Bonnie and Clyde, it may let audience know this might be the last moment they are together. The violent scene at the end of the film is very cruel even today. Bonnie and Clyde were shot to death by the police's crazy machine guns. It lasted for 23 seconds. The bullets rained. They were beaten to death, and the car was riddled with holes. During the gunfire, the director continued to use jump cuts, and at the same time took slow motion for the first time to show the bloody and cruelty of the gunfire, which reflected the tragic and bitter ending of the couple. In addition, Before the shot, a group of birds suddenly started in the woods, then Malcolm suddenly got under the car, and then Bonnie and Clyde were facing each other. Each shot was fleeting. After the machine gun fire started, slow motion was used: Clyde fell to the ground and rolled, Bonnie's beautiful blond hair hung upside down on the car pedal. This treatment showed a desolate taste, and at the same time allowed their deaths to be sublimated, with a solemn ritual beauty in the violent cruelty. This is also the director's sympathy and regret for the protagonist.

Moreover, the gunfire is pretty quick but two characters shot and fell to the ground, covered with blood. The duration is a long time by using a slow motion effect present to the audience how badly and tragic could be at the end. Furthermore, in the final scene it also imitated and captured the melodrama satisifed storytelling ‘intermingling elements of two classic American genres (the gangster film and film noir) with an energetic new cinematic style’ (Lanzoni 2004: 222), and of course, ‘the use of different cinematic devices-such as Jean Luc Godard’s use of mobile hand-camera shots, sweeping camera work, and profusion of location shotting’ (Lanzoni 2004: 223) all inspired young Hollywood filmmakers to renaissance.

As stated in previous before, this might be the first time, Hollywood film end within an antic-climax and tragic, bitter way. This is as a result of a modification was close to present itself in Hollywood by the tip of 50s, the preponderant action at law had shifting the film studios vertical integration. Before the ruling in 1948, studios controlled the assembly distribution and exhibition of the films, so as to make sure the likelihood of competitor with the studios the ruling expressed that that they had to allow one among this stuff up, the studio’s set get eliminate the chains of movie theatres they own, that may solely screen the films they produced, the loss of those theatres caused studios to require a colossal financial hit. Throughout the 1950s, the studios struggled to contend with television, in order that they enforced all kinds of technical innovations, like method and 3d to induce the how everts within the seats, but a minimum of had very little impact. But because of this impact, it gave a lot of young American film makers an opportunity to make different kinds of film or redefine American Hollywood film. This ushered in the new Hollywood era. Therefore, the making of Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn) and The Graduate (1967, Mike Nichols), both films have a description of sex, which is very large in the Hollywood environment at the time, so to a large extent, the two films ended the Hayes Code and opened a new door for Hollywood.

Furthermore, withinside the 1960s, Italian comedies, spaghetti Westerns, Japanese movies, and French New Wave movies have been all amassed together. These types of movies will continue to inspire the aesthetics and practices of new Hollywood movies. It also in some way ‘the symbiotic relationship which links politics and popular culture in the U.S. reached an unprecedented level with the glamorous pop-cult surrounding John F. Kennedy and his administration – and it certainly manifests itself in New Hollywood cinema, too’ (Horwath 2004: 12). When look back through back the sequence from Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn), it can clearly see that the director deliberately broke some of the rules and operations of some classic Hollywood routines, and extensively used some brand-new editing techniques and cinematography techniques, using the jump-cut editing and character close-up shot techniques by using the style of French New Wave to excavate and explore the spiritual world of people. While neglecting the close-knit plot weaving and incoherent narrative techniques, it shows the revolution of New Hollywood and reflects the unrest and chaos of American society at that time. In the post-war America, inequality issues such as ethnicity, civil rights, and traditional systems appeared. At this time, the emergence of New Hollywood breaks the shackles of traditional concepts and replaces classical Hollywood’s pursuit of "dreams". Instead, it uses bold creative concepts to describe reality, vents current dissatisfaction and depression with real life, and becomes an effective psychological placebo for audiences. To this day, Hollywood's creative methods are not static. Dare to innovate, conform to the development of the times, innovative and representative of the mainstream, and use new technology to create today's unique pattern of American cinema.

Overall, as stated above one of the most important Hollywood renaissance film Bonnie and Clyde clearly adopted the style of “French New Wave” in order to appeal to and fascinated the audience of youth in 1967. Existentialism appeared in France in the 1920s and 1930s and swept the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Leading to the counter-cultural movement, hippies use rock music, sexual openness, and drugs to keep themselves alive in the present. In particular, the outbreak of the Vietnam War meant the new generation of “born to kill”. On the one hand, they instilled prosperity and equality in the United States since they were young, but now they have seen tens of millions of poor people and blacks struggle for power; on the other hand, the government promotes the maintenance of world peace, but sends young people to the battlefield. More and more people feel that there is a problem with the American government and society, and they want to resist and save the United States. But compared to organized revolutions, they are more of a change in lifestyle, indulging and sinking themselves. There is no doubt just like Girgus stated ‘In the Hollywood renaissance, the dynamic relationship between sexuality and gender revisions heroic masculinity. The spectacle of the male face and body continually subverts and complicates stereotypical notions of one-dimensional masculinity.’ (Girgus 1998: 213) Moreover, Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn) is the same as the films The Graduate (1967, Mike Nichols) and Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper) of the same period. The hopelessness and wandering expressed by the film fully conform to the state of mind, depression, and madness of the young people at the time of the film's release. New Hollywood movies express the absurdity and nihilism of life emphasized by existentialism through the contradictions between people and society, and the way people find it difficult to find themselves.

Bibliorgraphy:

Buckmaster, Luke (2017) [online] ‘How Bonnie and Clyde’s final scene changed Hollywood’, Available at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170814-how-bonnie-and-clydes-final-scene-changed-hollywood [Accessed 1 November 2021]

Graham, Peter, and Ginette Vincendeau. The French new wave: critical landmarks. BFI Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 227

Horwath, A., 2004. The Impure Cinema: New Hollywood 1967-1976. In The Last Great American Picture Show (pp. 9-18). Amsterdam University Press, 12

Lanzoni, R.F., 2004. French cinema: from its beginnings to the present. A&C Black, 212-223

Girgus, S.B. and Girgus, S.B., 1998. Hollywood renaissance: the cinema of democracy in the era of Ford, Kapra, and Kazan. Cambridge University Press, 213

Filmography:

Bonnie and Clyde [Feature Film] Dir. Arthur Penn. Warner Bros. Pictures, America. 1967. 111 minutes.

Breathless [Feature Film] Dir. Jean-Luc Goddard. Les Films Imperia, France. 1960. 87 minutes.

Easy Rider [Feature Film] Dir. Dennis Hopper. Raybert Productions, America. 1969. 95 minutes.

The Graduate [Feature Film] Dir. Mike Nichols. Lawrence Turman Productions, America. 1967. 106 minutes.

Shoot the piano player [Feature Film] Dir. Francois Truffut. Les Films de la Pleiade, France. 1960. 81 minutes.