ngster genre:
Public fascination with Bonnie and Clyde, and with the other rampaging criminal gangs of the late twenties and early thirties, helped to make the gangster film one of Hollywood's most important and typical creations. . . Not only popular with the American public, the gangster film was an international success. It made a particular impact on the young post-World-War-II French critics and directors who had determined to revitalize the French film: both Frantois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard showed their fascination with the American gangster film in the exciting new film criticism they wrote for journals such as Cahiers du Cinema (Cawelti 1-2).
The gangsters of the 1930s and the gangster films of the era both came to embody as much myth as reality. The newspapers built the gangsters into mythic icons, and the motion pictures glamorized their actions even further. Bonnie and Clyde continues this mythology and glamorization by making the leaders of the Barrow gang into a pair of social climbers who also represent the little people against the power of the banks. Penn achieves this through the strength of the charisma of his two stars and through the use of humor. The gang does not kill indiscriminately and does not terrorize the people they rob. Instead, they enter a bank and introduce themselves, showing their faith in the gangster as superstar. Penn makes direct links between the image the gang develops of itself and the popular culture of the
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