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Society Marches On has been renamed; cleaning out misuse and moving examples


* {{Gorn}}: Although [[SocietyMarchesOn not impressive by modern standards]], for its time (right after the removal of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode), this was a very violent movie and among the first to show actual blood splatter on screen.

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* {{Gorn}}: Although [[SocietyMarchesOn not impressive by modern standards]], standards, for its time (right after the removal of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode), this was a very violent movie and among the first to show actual blood splatter on screen.



* MoodWhiplash: Used to give the graphic ([[SocietyMarchesOn for the time]]) violence more impact. For example; The bank robbery scene, where Moss parks the car, first plays out as comedy as the trio bumble around trying to escape, but turns deadly when the banker jumps onto the running board and Clyde graphically shoots him in the face.

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* MoodWhiplash: Used to give the graphic ([[SocietyMarchesOn for the time]]) violence more impact. For example; The bank robbery scene, where Moss parks the car, first plays out as comedy as the trio bumble around trying to escape, but turns deadly when the banker jumps onto the running board and Clyde graphically shoots him in the face.
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* ActionGirl: Bonnie.

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* ActionGirl: %%* Action Girl: Bonnie.
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* RuleOfSymbolism:
** Clyde's pistol is long, hard and caressed by Bonnie within the first few scenes of the film. The first time the audiences see a gun, Clyde holds it at crotch level and Bonnie strokes it, murmuring "Yeah." To make the innuendo levels more disturing, we see that Clyde has a match held between his teeth. [[SincerityMode As he holds his pistol near his fly, he moves his teeth in such a way that this (very erect) matchstick waggles up and down.]] Bonnie states that Clyde didn't have the courage to use it, and when he proves he does in robbing a general store, Bonnie starts smooching him as they drive away. But once they get to a secluded spot, Clyde jumps out of the car saying he's not much of a lover boy to which Bonnie snarkily replies, "[his] advertising is just dandy. Folks wouldn't guess [he doesn't] have a thing to sell. She's clearly referring to the "advertising" of the gun. Guns are so synonymous with penises that Bonnie assumes when a man shows off his gun, he's intimating that he'd like to show off something else, as well. There are more than just phallic guns in this film. You can't rob a bank without firing off a few warning shots, and the police that track and ultimately kill B & C are locked and loaded.
** One point of the film has Buck Barrow tell a cheesy joke about a boy's sick mother and the boy having to feed her a fresh quart of a milk every day with brandy in it. She would drink a little more every day for nearly a week, then on the final day, she'd swallow the whole thing down and then tell him not to sell their cow. The joke has a dark undercurrent. It's about something poisonous being slipped into something wholesome and going undetected. The old woman doesn't want to drink alcohol — she's a teetotaler who doesn't believe in drinking. But by drinking fresh milk laced with brandy, she not only chokes it down, but she begins to love it. There are some serious parallels between the story of Bonnie and Clyde and the relationship of this woman to her milky brandy. The woman drinks a little more brandy every day, and she begins to crave it so much she can't think of doing without it— "don't sell that cow!" Bonnie and Clyde experience a similar progression. They start out small — Clyde commits armed robbery, and Bonnie's an accomplice. They get in a little deeper — Clyde kills a man, and Bonnie aids in armed robbery. Finally, they're both wanted for multiple crimes that include the murder of police officers, Clyde's brother is dead, and they're both wounded. Clyde's so used to the crime that informs his life that he's not able to think of a life without it. Like the woman in the joke, he can't make a distinction between wholesome milk (or an honest life) and poisonous brandy (or a life full of bank robbery).
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* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Beyond the significant Historical Hero Upgrade it gives the titular Outlaw Couple and the equally significant HistoricalVillainUpgrade it gives to Frank Hamer, many things in the film were flatly made up. The film's C.W. Moss is a CompositeCharacter of two actual gang members, W.D. Jones and Henry Methvin, and omits many other gang members. Clyde is portrayed in the film as impotent, though there's no basis for this in reality. A nasty car accident that left Bonnie with a permanently lame leg is not in the film, nor is the frequent visits they made to their families. Clyde's motivation for the gang's crime spree is portrayed as anger at the banks for their role in TheGreatDepression, but in reality it was over his abuses at the hands of both guards and inmates during his two-year imprisonment at [[HellholePrison Eastham Prison Farm]], and the gang often targeted small stores and gas stations over banks.

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* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Beyond the significant Historical Hero Upgrade HistoricalHeroUpgrade it gives the titular Outlaw Couple and the equally significant HistoricalVillainUpgrade it gives to Frank Hamer, many things in the film were flatly made up. The film's C.W. Moss is a CompositeCharacter of two actual gang members, W.D. Jones and Henry Methvin, and omits many other gang members. Clyde is portrayed in the film as impotent, though there's no basis for this in reality. A nasty car accident that left Bonnie with a permanently lame leg is not in the film, nor is the frequent visits they made to their families. Clyde's motivation for the gang's crime spree is portrayed as anger at the banks for their role in TheGreatDepression, but in reality it was over his abuses at the hands of both guards and inmates during his two-year imprisonment at [[HellholePrison Eastham Prison Farm]], and the gang often targeted small stores and gas stations over banks.
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A 1967 biopic about the famous 1930s bank-robbing duo of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Creator/FayeDunaway and Creator/WarrenBeatty.

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A 1967 biopic {{biopic}} about the famous 1930s bank-robbing duo of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Creator/FayeDunaway and Creator/WarrenBeatty.
Creator/WarrenBeatty in the title roles.
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** Bonnie Parker was actually married to a man named Roy Thornton in 1926, when she was 16. The marriage failed due to his frequent absences and brushes with the law. They never divorced, but by January 1929 the marriage was for all purposes over.

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* RealityEnsues: Creator/RobertTowne wanted to include things he'd never seen in movies before. For example, he noted that in movies, characters always seem to find parking spaces with no problems. Here, C.W. has dificulty finding a space and nearly bungles the getaway when the car gets stuck to another car.


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* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Creator/RobertTowne wanted to include things he'd never seen in movies before. For example, he noted that in movies, characters always seem to find parking spaces with no problems. Here, C.W. has dificulty finding a space and nearly bungles the getaway when the car gets stuck to another car.
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** The couple is shown as robbing several banks, but even though they did rob some banks, in reality they tended to rob gas stations and mom-and-pop grocery stores, for little return.
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** Most historians agree that Bonnie wasn't heavily involved in the robberies the gang committed, at least not to the extent that is shown in the film.
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* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Wow. TruthInTelevision, too.

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* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Wow. [[spoiler:The final scene, where a posse guns down Bonnie and Clyde and fires many, many shots at them. TruthInTelevision, too.too- that was how their death was in real life.]]

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* CatchPhrase: "We rob banks."

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* CatchPhrase: {{Catchphrase}}: "We rob banks."


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* RealityEnsues: Creator/RobertTowne wanted to include things he'd never seen in movies before. For example, he noted that in movies, characters always seem to find parking spaces with no problems. Here, C.W. has dificulty finding a space and nearly bungles the getaway when the car gets stuck to another car.
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* MohsScaleOfViolenceHardness: It rates a 7, which is pretty high for a 1967 movie, largely due to the blood splatter from Clyde Barrow pistol-whipping the man in the grocery show in the head, the bank teller's bloody headshot through a car window, and, of course, the [[spoiler: the deaths of the two main characters at the end, complete with a small chunk of Clyde's scalp flying off, if you look carefully enough]].
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Replaced original page image with film poster showing more characters.


[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bonnie_clyde_7369.jpg]]

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[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bonnie_clyde_7369.jpg]]
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* CompositeCharacter: C.W. Moss is a composite of two members of the Barrow Gang, W.D. Jones and Henry Methvin. The real W.D. Jones was not amused by this, and attempted to sue Warner Bros. for defamation. There is no known record his case was ever heard.

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* CompositeCharacter: C.W. Moss is a composite of two members of the Barrow Gang, W.D. Jones and Henry Methvin. The real W.D. Jones was not amused by this, and attempted to sue Warner Bros. Creator/WarnerBros for defamation. There is no known record that his case was ever heard.



* MultipleGunshotDeath: How Bonnie and Clyde get killed by the police. TruthInTelevision-the police went for ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill because they were ''that'' much of TheDreaded.

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* MultipleGunshotDeath: How Bonnie and Clyde get killed by the police. TruthInTelevision-the TruthInTelevision -- the police went for ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill because they were ''that'' much of TheDreaded.



* RealWomenDontWearDresses: Blanche Barrow is portrayed as TheLoad in contrast to Bonnie Parker and, in the real Blanche's own words, [[HystericalWoman "a screaming horses's ass."]] Significant in that the two male leads, Clyde Barrow and Buck Barrow, aren't foiled against each other to the same extreme.

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* RealWomenDontWearDresses: Blanche Barrow is portrayed as TheLoad in contrast to Bonnie Parker and, in the real Blanche's own words, [[HystericalWoman "a screaming horses's horse's ass."]] Significant in that the two male leads, Clyde Barrow and Buck Barrow, aren't foiled against each other to the same extreme.



* StopOrIWillShoot: Bonnie and Clyde are gunned down without warning in a police ambush — this was TruthInTelevision. It should be noted that Barrow had shot his way out of several previous attempts to capture him, and his gang had killed nine lawman and several civilians during their crime spree.

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* StopOrIWillShoot: Bonnie and Clyde are gunned down without warning in a police ambush — this ambush. This was TruthInTelevision. It should be noted that Barrow had shot his way out of several previous attempts to capture him, and his gang had killed nine lawman lawmen and several civilians during their crime spree.
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* AssholeVictim: They rob banks, which after seeing what the banks have done to the poor folks of the country by foreclosing on their property, makes them look not as bad after all. However, this better describes John Dillinger than it would the real Bonnie and Clyde. ''Film/{{Dillinger}}'' takes numerous shots at the pair.

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* AssholeVictim: They rob banks, which after seeing what the banks have done to the poor folks of the country by foreclosing on their property, makes them look not as bad after all. However, this better describes John Dillinger than it would the real Bonnie and Clyde. ''Film/{{Dillinger}}'' ''Film/Dillinger1973'' takes numerous shots at the pair.
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Bonnie is a bored waitress who goes off with small-time crook Clyde on a lark. Bonnie and Clyde graduate to bank-robbing and murder after being joined by Clyde's brother Buck (Creator/GeneHackman), Buck's wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), and gas-station attendant C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard). The Barrow Gang becomes infamous. They capture, humiliate, and release a Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), who swears vengeance.

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Bonnie is a bored waitress who goes off with small-time crook Clyde on a lark. Bonnie and Clyde graduate to bank-robbing and murder after being joined by Clyde's brother Buck (Creator/GeneHackman), Buck's wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), (Creator/EstelleParsons), and gas-station attendant C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard).(Creator/MichaelJPollard). The Barrow Gang becomes infamous. They capture, humiliate, and release a Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), (Creator/DenverPyle), who swears vengeance.
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* AlasPoorVillain: Bonnie and Clyde are portrayed in a sympathetic light, and their deaths are meant to come off as tragic.
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* BreadEggsMilkSquick: Used in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZpm1zj9510 the original trailer]]: "They're Young. They're In Love. They Kill People." This was also a {{Tagline}}.
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* DumbBlonde: Averted. Bonnie is as mature and and as active a robbery participant as Clyde and Buck

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* DumbBlonde: Averted. Bonnie is as mature and and as active a robbery participant as Clyde and Buck
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* DumbBlonde: Averted. Bonnie is as mature and and as active an active participant as Clyde and Buck.

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* DumbBlonde: Averted. Bonnie is as mature and and as active an active a robbery participant as Clyde and Buck.Buck
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* DumbBlonde: Averted. Bonnie is as mature and and as active an active participant as Clyde and Buck.
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* ArchEnemy: Sheriff Frank Hamer has Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, a couple of bank robbers who humiliated him and whom he vows to capture or kill.
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Not a trope of this work


* AnimatedAdaptation: In the waning days of WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes, Creator/RobertMcKimson directed two cartoons featuring [[http://looneytunes.wikia.com/wiki/Bunny_and_Claude Bunny and Claude]], Bonnie and Clyde reimagined as rabbits who steal carrots, with a strong resemblance to Beatty and Dunaway. Bunny's character design was also obviously influenced by the iconic photo of the real-life Bonnie Parker leaning against a car with a cigar in her mouth. Since the film had been a big hit for Creator/WarnerBrothers, the whole thing was something of a SelfParody for the studio.
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Creator/GeneWilder has a small part as a kidnap victim of the Barrow Gang.
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* DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster: With the bonus of the title characters being [[OutlawCouple lovers on the run]].

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* DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster: With Whenever the bonus of Barrow gang runs from the title characters being [[OutlawCouple lovers on law after a heist, upbeat bluegrass music plays, making the run]].outlaw lifestyle seem like a wild adventure. The film also acknowledges how the gang liked to pose for pictures with their guns.

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* AdaptationalHeroism: The movie version of Bonnie and Clyde may have their moments of being evil (shooting at a poor guard going for his gun) but they are very AffablyEvil for the most part. Real-life accounts and films that try to be more true to history such as ''Film/TheHighwaymen'' showcase that they were complete sociopaths.



* AnachronisticSoundtrack: Bluegrass music began in the 1940s, about 10 years after the events of the film. Old-time music sounds very similar, however, and was around during the 1930s.



* BetrayalByInaction: C.W. betrays Bonnie and Clyde by not telling them about the planned ambush by the law and hiding in town so that they'll leave without him.



* BloodlessCarnage: {{Averted}}. This was one of the first films to use squib effects to realistically depict gunshot wounds. It inspired Creator/SamPeckinpah to take it UpToEleven with ''Film/TheWildBunch''.



** Plain-faced, 90-pound Bonnie Parker and shrimpy, 5'6 little Clyde Barrow, played by foxy Faye Dunaway and tall, handsome Creator/WarrenBeatty.

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** Plain-faced, 90-pound While Bonnie Parker and shrimpy, 5'6 little Clyde Barrow, played by foxy Faye weren't ugly, they didn't hold a candle to Dunaway and tall, handsome Creator/WarrenBeatty.Beatty, two of Hollywood's most glamorous heartthrobs of the era.



* {{Hobos}}: The gang meets up with a camp of them after a shootout and ask for water; they get a lot of attention and are given soup as well as water.

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* {{Hobos}}: The gang meets up with stops by a camp of them Hooverville and after a shootout and to ask for water; they get a lot of attention and are given soup as well as water.



* LuredIntoATrap: C.W.'s father flags down Bonnie and Clyde under the pretense of asking for help with his car, where lawmen are waiting to ambush them.



* OhCrap: Bonnie and Clyde, [[spoiler:when they realize they are about to be ambushed.]]

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* OhCrap: OhCrap:
** Eugene, when he realizes that he's charging into a confrontation with a bunch of outlaws who might be armed. Even more-so when the outlaws start chasing ''him''.
**
Bonnie and Clyde, [[spoiler:when they realize they are about to be ambushed.]]



* PhallicWeapon: The film is not at all subtle about this with Clyde.

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* PhallicWeapon: The film is not at all subtle about this with Clyde. impotent Clyde first woos Bonnie by showing her his revolver. She reaches out and strokes the barrel.
* PlatonicLifePartners: Bonnie and Clyde behave as a couple even though Clyde cannot have sex. On the day before their deaths, however, Clyde finally manages to perform.



* SmallTownBoredom: One of the reasons Bonnie joins Clyde in the first place, as he lampshades during a diner conversation.

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* SmallTownBoredom: One of the reasons Bonnie joins Bonnie's introduction has her flopping around her bed in boredom. Clyde in the first place, as he lampshades during a diner conversation. acknowledges that boredom was her primary reason to join him.
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* AdaptationalHeroism: The movie version of Bonnie and Clyde may have their moments of being evil (shooting at a poor guard going for his gun) but they are very AffablyEvil for the most part. Real-life accounts and films that try to be more true to history such as ''Film/TheHighwaymen'' showcase that they were complete sociopaths.
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No potholes in headlining quotes.


->''"This here's Miss Bonnie Parker. I'm Clyde Barrow. [[ItsWhatIDo We rob banks]]."''

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->''"This here's Miss Bonnie Parker. I'm Clyde Barrow. [[ItsWhatIDo We rob banks]].banks."''
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See also ''Film/TheHighwaymen'', which tells the story from the perspectives of Frank Hamer and his partner, Maney Gault.
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** The ambush that kills Bonnie and Clyde is portrayed considerably differently than reality. The film's ambush has Clyde outside the car and unarmed by the time the shooting starts, and the motivation for an ambush is primarily Hamer's revenge for his previous treatment as their hostage. The real ambush was conducted by a six-man posse including Hamer, each armed with an automatic rifle, shotgun, and pistol. As soon as Clyde's car was spotted and identified, the posse emptied all of their weapons into the car as it passed by. The gang had been credited with the deaths of nine police officers by this point, most of whom had been killed outside of robberies. With prior confrontations having ended with the gang escaping, police weren't interested in taking further chances.

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** The ambush that kills Bonnie and Clyde is portrayed considerably differently than reality. The film's ambush has Clyde outside the car and unarmed by the time the shooting starts, and the motivation for an ambush is primarily Hamer's revenge for his previous treatment as their hostage. The real ambush was conducted by a six-man posse including Hamer, each armed with an automatic rifle, shotgun, and pistol. As soon as Clyde's car was spotted and identified, the posse emptied all of their weapons into the car as it passed by. There's some dispute from witnesses and participants whether Hamer or another member of the posse ordered Bonnie and Clyde to halt and surrender beforehand; if so, the order went unheeded by the outlaws. The gang had been credited with the deaths of nine police officers by this point, most of whom had been killed outside of robberies. With prior confrontations having ended with the gang escaping, police weren't interested in taking further chances.

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* FilkSong: "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" by Georgie Fame (which is just as historically inaccurate as the film) and Music/MerleHaggard's "The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde" were both inspired by the film and became hits in the wake of its massive success.



* RefrainFromAssuming: "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" by Georgie Fame (which is just as historically inaccurate as the film) was not written or recorded for the film although it was a hit at about the same time.

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