1. Bonnie and Clyde and Genre
Gangster Movies

2. Genre Conventions: Setting
Typical Gangster Movie:
Big city, Prohibition, hideouts, day vs. night,
relat. with cops
Bonnie and Clyde:
Rural Texas, outside, small towns, cars, motels,
Depression, day

3. Genre Conventions: Presentation
Typical Gangster Movie:
Focus on people (as opposed to setting), dark
and smoky, muted colors
Bonnie and Clyde:
Day, earthy colors, shots of landscapes,
closeups, quick editing, jump cuts, “foggy
mountain breakdown” music, humor

4. Genre Conventions: Character Types
Typical Gangster Movie:
Godfather, mother, trigger happy guy, new guy
to gang who works his way up, antihero,
prostitutes, mob wife, moll/girlfriend, family
Bonnie and Clyde:
Couple, family, antihero, outlaws

5. Genre Conventions: Stars
Typical Gangster Movie:
Bonnie and Clyde:

6. Genre Conventions: Story Formula
Typical Gangster Movie:
Rags  Riches  Destruction
Bonnie and Clyde:
Rags  Better Rags  Destruction

7. Genre Conventions:
Conflicts Addressed
Typical Gangster Movie:
• Rule of law vs. survival of the fittest
• Due process vs. taking the law into your own
hands
• Gangsters vs. cops
• Gangsters vs. gangsters
Bonnie and Clyde:
• Rebellion vs. authority
• Bonnie vs. Blanche

8. Genre Conventions: Themes
Typical Gangster Movie:
Success, power & corruption, greed, loyalty,
crime doesn’t pay
Bonnie and Clyde:

9. “Social problems are condensed and displaced
from the social to the personal.”
- Bill Nichols, Engaging Cinema

10. “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.”
- Roger Ebert (1967)