Bonnie And Clyde (1967)

Set in Texas during the Great Depression, a bored young woman (Faye Dunaway) working as a waitress catches an ex-con (Warren Beatty) trying to steal her mother's car. Wanting to escape her dull existence, she partners with him and they go on a crime spree and it isn't long before they are known nation wide as Bonnie and Clyde of the Barrow gang. Directed by Arthur Penn (THE MIRACLE WORKER), this film was a game changer in American cinema. Its fusion of graphic violence (for its day, contemporary violence in movies has far surpassed it) and dark humor was shocking. But its violence wasn't gratuitous and there's a lyricism to much of its violence, it's certainly there in the film's bloody finale. Yet despite the violence, it's not a gritty vision of the actual Bonnie and Clyde, it's a romanticized version of the myth of Bonnie And Clyde. The acting is very good and in the case of Gene Hackman as Clyde's brother and Estelle Parsons (in an Oscar winning performance) as his wife, better than good. In her breakout role, Dunaway is stunning even if she looks more like a high fashion model than a depression era waitress but as I said, this is a romanticized version. With Michael J. Pollard, Gene Wilder, Evans Evans and Denver Pyle.