NEXT SCREENINGS

This month catch two cinematic masterpieces at The Castle Cinema!

Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, a groundbreaking classic, of the New Hollywood era, a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance Starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty on February 19th and 27th at 7:30 PM, while Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a taut Tennessee Williams adaptation with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, plays on February 23rd at 11:45 AM—don’t miss these unforgettable films on the big screen.

Then celebrate love and classic cinema with a special screening of Casablanca (1942) on 16mm at The Mildmay Club, Thursday 13th February, 7pm doors, 7.30pm film starts.

BONNIE & CYLDE (1967)

“Bonnie and Clyde” is a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life.

The lives in this case belonged, briefly, to Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. They were two nobodies who got their pictures in the paper by robbing banks and killing people. They weren’t very good at the bank robbery part of it, but they were fairly good at killing people and absolutely first-class at getting their pictures in the paper.

Bonnie was a gum-chewing waitress and Clyde was a two-bit hood out on parole. But from the beginning, they both seemed to have the knack of entertaining people. Bonnie wrote ballads and mailed them in with pictures Clyde took with his Kodak. They seemed to consider themselves public servants, bringing a little sparkle to the poverty and despair of the Dust Bowl during the early Depression years.

“Good afternoon,” Clyde would say when they walked into a bank. “This is the Barrow Gang.” In a way Bonnie and Clyde were pioneers, consolidating the vein of violence in American history and exploiting it, for the first time in the mass media.

Under Arthur Penn’s direction, this is a film aimed squarely and unforgivingly at the time we are living in. It is intended, horrifyingly, as entertainment. And so it will be taken. The kids on dates will go to see this one, just like they went to see “Dirty Dozen” and “Born Losers” and “Hells Angels on Wheels.”

But this time, maybe, they’ll get more than they counted on. The violence in most American movies is of a curiously bloodless quality. People are shot and they die, but they do not suffer. The murders are something to be gotten over with, so the audience will have its money’s worth, the same is true of the sex. Both are like the toy in a Crackerjack box: Worthless, but you feel cheated it it’s not there.

In “Bonnie and Clyde,” however, real people die. Before they die they suffer, horribly. Before they suffer they laugh, and play checkers, and make love, or try to. These become people we know, and when they die it is not at all pleasant to be in the audience.

When people are shot in “Bonnie and Clyde.” they are literally blown to bits. Perhaps that seems shocking. But perhaps at this time, it is useful to be reminded that bullets really do tear skin and bone, and that they don’t make nice round little holes like the Swiss cheese effect in Fearless Fosdick.

We are living in a period when newscasts refer casually to “waves” of mass murders, Richard Speck’s photograph is sold on posters in Old Town and snipers in Newark pose for Life magazine (perhaps they are busy now getting their ballads to rhyme). Violence takes on an unreal quality. The Barrow Gang reads its press clippings aloud for fun. When C.W. Moss takes the wounded Bonnie and Clyde to his father’s home, the old man snorts: “What’d they ever do for you boy? Didn’t even get your name in the paper.” Is that a funny line, or a tragic one?

The performances throughout are flawless. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, in the title roles, surpass anything they have done on the screen before and establish themselves (somewhat to my surprise) as major actors.

Michael J. Pollard, as C.W. Moss, the driver and mechanic for the gang, achieves a mixture of moronic good humor and genuine pathos that is unforgettable. When Bonnie tells him, “We rob banks,” and asks him to come along, he says nothing. But the expression on his face and the movements of his body create a perfect, delightful moment.

Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons play Buck and Blanche Barrow, the other members of the gang, as inarticulate, simple, even good – willed. When Buck is reunited with his kid brother, they howl with glee and punch each other to disguise the truth that they have nothing to say. After the gang has shot its way out of a police trap and Buck is mortally wounded, Blanche’s high, mindless scream in the getaway car provides, for me, a very adequate vision of hell.

This is pretty clearly the best American film of the year. It is also a landmark. Years from now it is quite possible that “Bonnie and Clyde” will be seen as the definitive film of the 1960s, showing with sadness, humor and unforgiving detail what one society had come to. The fact that the story is set 35 years ago doesn’t mean a thing. It had to be set sometime. But it was made now and it’s about us.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1957)

AN all-fired lot of high-powered acting is done in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," film version of the Tennessee Williams stage play, which came to the Music Hall yesterday. Burl Ives, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson and two or three more almost work and yell themselves to pieces making this drama of strife within a new-rich Southern family a ferocious and fascinating show.And what a pack of trashy people these accomplished actors perform!

Such a lot of gross and greedy characters haven't gone past since Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes" went that way. The whole time is spent by them in wrangling over a dying man's anticipated estate or telling one another quite frankly what sort of so-and-so's they think the others are.As a straight exercise in spewing venom and flinging dirty linen on a line, this fine Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production in color would be hard to beat. It is done by superior talents, under the driving direction of Richard Brooks, making even the driest scenes drip poison with that strong, juicy Williams dialogue. And before the tubs full of pent-up fury, suspicion and hatred are drained, every major performer in the company has had a chance to play at least one bang-up scene.

The fattest and juiciest opportunities go to Mr. Newman, Miss Taylor and Mr. Ives as the son, his wife and the former's father (the Big Daddy of the lot), respectively. In their frequent and assorted encounters, they have chances, together and in pairs, to discourse and lash each other's feelings over the several problems of the family.First there is the private problem of why this son and his wife do not have any children—and, indeed, why the young man shuns his wife. Why does he spend his time boozing, hobbling around his bedroom on a crutch and reviling his wife, who quite obviously has the proclivities of that cat on the roof?And, secondly, why does this young fellow resent and resist his old man, who as obviously wants to be pals with him and leave him his estate if he will only have kids?Let it be said, quite frankly, that the ways in which these problems are solved do not represent supreme achievements of ingenuity or logic in dramatic art.

Mr. Williams' original stage play has been altered considerably, especially in offering explanation of why the son is as he is. Now, a complicated business of hero-worship has been put by Mr. Brooks and James Poe in place of a strong suggestion of homosexuality in the play.No wonder the baffled father, in trying to find out what gives, roars with indignation: "Something's missing here!"It is, indeed. And something is missing in the dramatists' glib account of how the son gets together with his father in one easy discourse on love. But what is lacking in logical conflict is made up in visual and verbal displays of vulgar and violent emotions by everybody concerned.Mr. Newman is perhaps the most resourceful and dramatically restrained of the lot. He gives an ingratiating picture of a tortured and tested young man.

Miss Taylor is next. She is terrific as a panting, impatient wife, wanting the love of her husband as sincerely as she wants an inheritance. Mr. Ives snorts and roars with gusto, Miss Anderson claws the air as his wife, and Mr. Carson squirms and howls atrocious English as their greedy, deceitful older son.Madeleine Sherwood does a fine job as the latter's cheap, child-heavy wife and a quartet of unidentified youngsters insult the human race as their brats.Lawrence Weingarten's production is lush with extravagance, which is thoroughly appropriate to the nature of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."The stage show at the Music Hall, entitled "Autumn Gallery," features Jeanette Scovotti, coloratura; Jack Beaber and Françoise Martinet, soloists; the Two Martys, novelty performers, and the Corps de Ballet and Rockettes. - Bosley Crowther, 1958

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