The gangster genre in film

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

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e between the law and the criminal element. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shown from the beginning of the film playing roles. Bonnie is in her room, bored and hot, when she sees Clyde outside looking over her mother's car, apparently thinking of stealing it. The two get together right away and drive off, sizing each other up as Clyde shows Bonnie his gun and introduces himself as a robber. The interplay between the two is overtly sexual, though Clyde's impotence is a barrier to anything more than sex-play. Other films had suggested a warped sexuality for the gangster as well, though this element is explored more openly in this film than in most. The interplay between Bonnie and Clyde becomes the central element in the film as they act out roles they create for themselves, borrow from newspaper accounts, adapt from the movies, and are given by the people who come to idolize them because they rob the banks that have been foreclosing on farm property in the Depression. There is a degree of inevitability in the way these roles develop, from the growth of the myth to the desire on the part of law enforcement to blast the myth and show it up as false. In the end, though, the ambush that kills Bonnie and Clyde as human bei

Category: Film - T