Summary
We see a slideshow of photographs as the credits roll. We learn that Bonnie Parker was born in Rowena, Texas in 1910, and worked at a cafe in Dallas before becoming a criminal. Clyde Barrow "was born to a family of sharecroppers" and started committing crimes as a young man.
Bonnie is naked in her room, looking at her reflection in a mirror, and moving around her room impatiently. Eventually she gets up and goes to the window where she looks out and sees Clyde trying to steal her mother's car. She hurriedly puts on a dress and runs downstairs to scold him. Lying, Clyde tells Bonnie he simply wants to buy the car, but she calls him out for lying. "You ain't got money for dinner, let alone buying no car."
The two flirt and Bonnie tells him she's on her way to work. After trying to guess whether she's a movie star, lady mechanic, or a maid, Clyde correctly guesses that Bonnie is a waitress. He tells her he was recently in state prison for armed robbery.
They walk towards Bonnie's work, flirting all the while. On the way, Clyde tells Bonnie that he chopped off two of his toes to get off of work detail, before offering to show her. When she questions whether he actually did it, he is silent. The two of them get sodas and Bonnie asks Clyde what armed robbery is like. "It ain't like anything," he says, and she suspects that he was faking it the whole time. Suddenly, Clyde pulls out a gun and Bonnie looks shocked, touching it. She taunts him, saying, "You wouldn't have the gumption to use it!"
He gets up and tells her to wait there, going in to the grocery store nearby. After a few moments, he runs out of the store holding cash and the two of them run towards Clyde's car just as the store clerk comes outside and begins shooting at them. As the couple jumps in a car, Clyde tells Bonnie his name and she tells him hers. They drive off down a dirt road and she laughs and kisses him.
A ways down the road, Bonnie ecstatically kisses Clyde, but he pushes her aside and gets out of the car. "I ain't much of a lover boy. That don't mean nothing personal 'bout you. I never saw no percentage in it," he tells her as she lights a cigarette. Bonnie is offended and when Clyde tries to comfort her, she hastily gets out of the car and storms away. Clyde tells her that she can return to West Dallas, but that if she comes with him, she can have a better, more interesting life.
Clyde tells Bonnie she should come on the road with him because she's "different" and together they could become famous, that she could go into a fancy hotel in Dallas wearing a silk dress. "You may be the best damn girl in Texas," Clyde tells her.
Over a meal, Clyde goes over Bonnie's biography with her. She didn't like school much, dropped out, and began waitressing, which she hated. A waitress brings Bonnie a burger, and Clyde tells Bonnie to change a curl in her hair because he doesn't like it. She covers it up, and he tells her she's a knockout.
Outside, Clyde gets in another person's car to steal it and Bonnie follows, leaving their other car behind. The next day Bonnie wakes up in an abandoned house that they spent the night in and runs to find Clyde, who slept out by the car. On the porch, Clyde shoots a line of bottles off a ledge. When Bonnie admires his aim, calling him "good," he tells her, "I ain't good, I'm the best!"
Clyde teaches Bonnie to shoot a gun, using a tire swing as a target. When a farmer appears near the house, Clyde points his gun at him and the man retreats. Bonnie and Clyde see the farmer's wife and children sitting in a nearby car, and he tells them that the house used to be his, but the bank took it. "Well that's a pitiful shame," says Bonnie, and the farmer starts to go back to his car, when suddenly Clyde shoots the sign that the bank put up when they took over the house. He hands the gun to the farmer, who shoots the sign as well. The farmer then calls over a black man, Davis, who used to help him run the farm, and invites him to shoot the sign, then shoots a window in the house. Davis shoots through a window too, smiling. The farmer introduces himself to Bonnie and Clyde as Otis, and leaves. "We rob banks," says Clyde, as Otis leaves.
In the car, Bonnie is concerned about their upcoming robbery, but Clyde comforts her. When they arrive, Clyde runs into the bank and tells the teller to hand over the money. The teller informs him that the bank closed a few weeks ago and there's no money there. Clyde looks around, before pulling the teller out of the booth and forcing him to tell Bonnie the bank is closed. When she hears, Bonnie starts laughing, and Clyde shoots the glass window of the bank before speeding away.
Clyde holds up a grocery store down the road, asking the clerk if they have any peach pies, when suddenly a man tries to attack him with a large butcher's knife. The two men engage in a struggle, but Clyde eventually hits the man in the head with his gun and jumps in the car with Bonnie at the wheel. They speed down the road.
When they stop at a car mechanic, the mechanic tells them that there's dirt in the fuel line. Bonnie tells him that the Ford coupe they're driving is stolen, and he giggles anxiously. Clyde asks the boy if he's a good driver and he introduces himself as C.W. Moss. Bonnie tells Moss that they rob banks, and Clyde asks if he thinks he's brave enough to be a robber. "I spent a year in reformatory," says Moss, proudly, but Clyde wants to know if he's up for bank robbery.
Analysis
The film does not spend very much time on exposition, instead immediately launching into the action of the film—which is based on real events—after a brief and succinct description at the start. After two brief biographical cards that introduce us to the titular characters, we are brought into the first scene, which is the crime duo's immediately flirtatious first meeting. This structure keeps the film very simple from the start; the premise is not a surprising or complicated one, but a simple boy-meets-girl, boy-convinces-girl-to-be-his-criminal-accomplice love story.
What is so immediately scintillating about Bonnie and Clyde's connection is that they are both immediately attracted to one another, and that their connection is based on their shared curiosity about crime. While Bonnie is coy and pretends to be shocked by Clyde's biography, soon enough they are sipping soda and she is asking him what armed robbery feels like, clearly enamored with the fantasy of theft and a life of crime. Thus, Bonnie and Clyde's love is not simply a reflection of their shared interest in one another, but also in their shared interest in breaking the law.
The film takes a playful tone in depicting the sinful and unlawful interests of the two protagonists. The viewer is not meant to judge the two criminals for wanting to break the law, but rather to align herself with them, to try to understand the thrill and enjoyment of the criminal life. The fact that Bonnie and Clyde are so attractive, have such a charming chemistry, and are almost naive in their youthful approach to one another, is one way that the filmmakers align the viewer with the less-than-savory characters. The criminal couple is glamorized by the film, and meant to be perceived as sympathetic.
Clyde's ability to pull off a crime is something of an aphrodisiac to Bonnie, a naive girl who dreams of something better than her provincial life living with her mother and working at a restaurant. After Clyde robs the store, they drive off as ecstatic banjo music plays and Bonnie embraces Clyde with ravenous kisses. Clyde's ability to rob a store and bring her money is incredibly attractive, and we see that it is not that they are attracted to one another in spite of their desperation and law-breaking tendencies, but because of them.
The economic backdrop of the film redeems the two criminals as well. When they sleep in an abandoned house, the criminal couple encounters a farmer who used to own the house, but who had to give it up to the bank. The man, whose family waits in the car, is badly down on his luck, and Bonnie and Clyde sympathize with his situation. By framing the two criminals against a backdrop of economic injustice and decline, the film positions Bonnie and Clyde as Robin Hood characters of sorts; while they might be stealing from institutions and from the state, they have strong moral convictions, and they are on the side of people who are downtrodden, and want to see justice served. Their empathy with the characters is epitomized by the moment that Clyde shoots the bank's sign in front of the farmer's former house.
