How 'Bonnie & Clyde' Changed Acting

Bonnie & Clyde is a flashpoint in American film history in more ways than one. Arthur Penn’s seminal crime drama ushered in the American New Wave of director-driven cinema in 1967. In a smaller, less notable fashion, however, Bonnie & Clyde marks a change in the way acting was perceived in the 1960’s and going forward. In the performances of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and their co-stars Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons, you have a perfect microcosm of the shift in acting style that was taking place at this time in American cinema.

Since the days of the silent era acting had always been broad and performative. With silent pictures, it came down to a simple matter that broad strokes of physical acting had to fill the space where words would go to tell the story of the movie. When sound was introduced, however, that broad, physical style was slow to evolve out of American cinema. Movie actors moving from Silent Films to sound were far too entrenched in that more forceful style of performance for it to go away quickly.

Add to that an influx of Broadway performers who picked up the mantle from the silent era actors who either aged out of the business or were unable to adapt to the sound era. Broadway, like silent films, was built on a foundation of broad gesture that was also accompanied by a big, booming voice. It’s the nature of theater for actors to make sure that they could be seen and heard in the back row of a theater with vocal projection and outsized gestures a major part of the style of acting that Broadway performers brought to the big screen.

This was accompanied by the rise of the movie musical which called upon exactly the kinds of talents that were in the wheelhouse of the Broadway transplants. The popularity of the musical and the Broadway trained performers dominating the still relatively young medium of film meant that the style of acting eschewed naturalism and intimacy in favor of grander, broader personalities and performances.

Not all actors fell into this style. Bogart, for instance, appeared made specifically for the movies. He was quieter, more intense and insular. These are the qualities that made him a movie star. He was different than most other actors, less showy and more natural. His influence was among those that would carry the medium forward, eventually. Bogart was ahead of his time in an era when performers like Marlon Brando and James Dean became the acting vogue and singers like Frank Sinatra brought an amplified nightclub style to the big screen.

You can see elements of the broad, bombastic style of acting and the insular, slightly Bogart-esque naturalism of the dominant pairs in Bonnie & Clyde. Though it might seem strange to compare Warren Beatty and Humphrey Bogart, watch Bonnie & Clyde and you will see an intense, insular performance, a hushed yet charismatic style, that reflects not just Bogey’s cool criminal aesthetic but his more cinematic than stage approach.

Beatty eschews big gestures, he’s not bombastic. He’s not quiet, but he’s not belting every line of his performance to the back of the theater either. It’s a cinematic performance, one that is aware that you don’t have to scream and gesture to be noticed on the big screen. Dunaway is slightly more flashy but as Bonnie and Clyde grow closer, their intimacy is in line with his more cinematic, less Broadway style.

Compare that to the performances of Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons in Bonnie & Clyde. In many ways, Gene Hackman was the last of the classically stagebound actors to make it into the big time in Hollywood. Hackman is big and booming, his line readings have volume and his gestures are broad and performative. The same for Parsons whose every emotion appears intended to land in the last row of a theater.

This is not to say that either Hackman or Parsons’ performances are bad. Not at all, they are intended to contrast Beatty and Dunaway. The characters are older than Bonnie & Clyde and while they are on the same deathly journey, they represent something different than the charismatic, almost demure glamour of Beatty and Dunaway. Hackman is a throwback to the Edward G. Robinson or Jimmy Cagney style of acting versus Beatty’s more dignified Bogart style.

Indeed, I am not writing this article to condemn the Broadway style, it has had its place in theater and in the movies for years. Denzel Washington is an actor whose style pushes the boundaries of cinematic acting toward something more in line with the stage and, if you haven't noticed, he's been incredibly successful that way.

It can come down to taste when it comes to how you judge naturalism versus bombast. My taste tends to run toward the more modern and cinematic style but I can appreciate people like Denzel or Gene Hackman who've made remarkable careers out of what I have termed in the past as 'show your work' acting, that kind of sweaty, leave it all on the field style where people really become aware that capital A-Acting is taking place.

In the right kind of movie, that type of performance is what is called for. Denzel directed himself to an Academy Award in Fences, an adaptation of August Wilson's Broadway play of the same title. Meryl Streep has earned numerous Academy Awards plaudits for her stagy, bigly, performances and I count myself a fan of at least a few of those performances.

The way Hackman barrels into his first scene in Bonnie & Clyde. He's a firecracker even as the movie has been popping along with gunfire throughout. Parsons meanwhile has the feel of a character from the 1940s a broadly emotional character whose every emotion has a bigness to it. She is a perfect contrast to Dunaway who can't stand her character in many ways because she is so very different from her calm, cool, self.

The contrast of styles is what elevates both sets of performances in Bonnie & Clyde and renders the film such an indelible place in film history. In some ways, it’s like a passing of the torch from one style to the next. Bonnie & Clyde didn’t invent naturalism or a more cinema based style of acting, but arriving as it does as a whole film, one that is changing the nature of Hollywood itself from a studio based system, to one, ever so briefly, led by artists, it’s unquestionably a flashpoint in the evolution of the form.