The gangster genre in film encompasses a number of different forms, and the range can be seen in a comparison of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, two films which make use of conventions of the gangster film while extending those conventions into very different territory. The gangster genre in American film is primarily an urban phenomenon, while Bonnie and Clyde has a rural setting in keeping with a specific criminal history from the 1930s. Breathless draws its inspiration from American crime films of the 1940s and uses the conventions found there to express a different view of the urban criminal landscape and of the way a film should be structured. In some respects, the Penn film is more conventional in structure, but it as well reshapes the genre in service of a more mythic expression of American freedom and rebellion.
The opening credits of Bonnie and Clyde suggest several elements coming together at once. A series of photographs evokes a different time and place, while the lettering bleeds from white to red and suggests the way the story will develop. Penn creates a strong sense of the 1930s as a time of disintegration, boredom, and dwindling opportunity, leaving his characters facing fewer and fewer choices. In this regard, the film mirrors one of the central generic conventions of the gangster film. Often, the young are shown as being at risk in a world where opportunity is diminished so that they see criminal pursuits as their only way of escaping from the mean streets of the city. In Bonnie and Clyde, however, it is the disintegrating rural landscape from which these characters want to escape, and what they yearn for above all is a degree of fame that will separate them from the run of the mill.
The real Bonnie and Clyde were among the well-known criminals of the 1930s, criminals who fascinated the public in newspaper and newsreel accounts and who fueled the development of the ga...