40 must-watch movies to consider yourself a film buff

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

“I’m Bonnie Parker and this is Mr. Clyde Barrow…we rob banks,” Faye Dunaway’s bank robbing bad girl Bonnie declares in this Arthur Penn-directed story of the infamous outlaw lovers. By the late ’60s, Hollywood was changing, with the studio system collapsing and audiences turning to television and foreign cinema as a means of seeing movies free of the presumed restrictions of classic film. A new crop of young directors, screenwriters, and producers were making their own features on the independent circuit, and Bonnie and Clyde was one of many films to come out of the hotbed of creativity.

The film features several of the things that just ten years before would have been taboo in mainstream cinema. It brutally depicts the violent life Bonnie and Clyde lived, culminating with a gunfight between sheriffs that nearly revels in watching the bullets riddle the two stars’ bodies. There’s also a noted uptick in sexuality, as much of the film deals with Clyde and Bonnie’s unconsummated relationship, with guns playing on all sorts of Freudian notions. Dunaway and Beatty, to their credit, are fantastic and lovely to look at. In fact, it’s this movie that’s cited as marking the rise of the beret, much like the one Dunaway wears in this feature.

Where to Watch It: FilmStruck is streaming it now. You can also access it to rent on Google Play, YouTube, Apple, and Vudu.