Reception
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts had so little faith in the film that, in a then-unprecedented move, they offered its first-time producer Warren Beatty 40% of the gross instead of a minimal fee. The movie went on to gross over $70 million worldwide by 1973. This made him a wealthy man and free to take on projects he wanted to do.
The film was controversial on its original release for its supposed glorification of murderers, and for its level of graphic violence, which was unprecedented at the time. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was so appalled that he began to campaign against the increasing brutality of American films. Dave Kaufman of Variety criticized the film for uneven direction and for portraying Bonnie and Clyde as bumbling fools. Joe Morgenstern for Newsweek initially panned the film as a "squalid shoot-'em-up-up for the moron trade." After seeing the film a second time and noticing the enthusiastic audience, he wrote a second article saying he had misjudged it and praised the film. Warner Brothers took advantage of this, marketing the film as having made a major critic change his mind about its virtues.
Roger Ebert gave Bonnie and Clyde a largely positive review, giving it four stars out of a possible four. He called the film "a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance." More than 30 years later, he added the film to his "Great Movies" list. Film critics Dave Kehr and James Berardinelli have also praised the film in the years since.
The fierce debate about the film is discussed at length in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. This 2009 documentary film chronicles what occurred as a result: the New York Times fired Bosley Crowther because his negative review seemed so out of touch with the public, and Pauline Kael, who wrote a lengthy freelance essay in The New Yorker in praise of the film, became the magazine's new staff critic.
Read more about this topic: Bonnie And Clyde (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)