Bonnie & Clyde

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Running Time	107 minutes	Commentary Tracks	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Other Extras	Cast/Crew Biographies Production Notes
Region	4
Distributor	Warner Brothers
RRP	$29.95

    Fairly soon, their crimes escalate, and they pick up a motorman - C. W. Moss (Michael J Pollard). They rob a bank and shoot someone trying to stop them. They then team up with Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife Blanche, and they set themselves up in a house. Pretty soon, they are discovered, and a shootout ensues, with a number of police officers being killed. Their crime spree continues, and they end up in Oklahoma, where they steal another car, which incidentally belongs to Eugene the undertaker (Gene Wilder in a small role).

    They continue on the run, robbing banks as they go until Bonnie demands that they stop and see her mother, which they do. They move on to another hideout. Presently, they are discovered, and another shootout ensues. Buck is severely injured and dies from his injuries. Blanche is blinded.

    Bonnie & Clyde end up at C. W. Moss' father's house where they are betrayed by Mr Moss. Finally, they are shot in an ambush.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced. It appears to have been taken from a print element, since projector markings are clearly visible in the upper right hand corner of the transfer at times. I note that the Region 1 version of this DVD is Pan & Scan only, so at least we have the movie in the theatrical format.

    The movie was generally reasonably sharp. One sequence in particular, however, was severely degraded with a very blurry picture, poor colour fidelity, severely muffled sound and numerous print artefacts present - this was from 67:00 to 71:21 (most of Chapter 21), which is the sequence where Bonnie meets with her mother. This sequence was so bad that I kept expecting the scene to cut to normal vision, revealing that we had been looking at a home movie, but it never did. Shadow detail was generally poor, and blacks were more of a very dark grey than black. Some frames appeared to have been cut out of the movie early on in the film, leading to some jerky motion, but this was a problem that fortunately did not persist.

    The colour was generally well saturated in the brightly-lit outdoor scenes, but tended to be quite muted in the lower lit scenes. This seems to be characteristic of early Technicolor prints. Overall, except for the severely degraded sequence mentioned previously, the colour fidelity was just barely acceptable.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts were not a problem with this transfer. Film artefacts were present frequently, but were not particularly intrusive, except during Chapter 21 as mentioned previously, where they became unacceptable.

    I felt that this transfer had possibly been taken from a number of print sources, since the quality varied, and in particular had the one severely degraded sequence.

Audio

    Dialogue was fairly clear and intelligible, except for severe muffling during Chapter 21. There was a great deal of hiss in the soundtrack at times which was occasionally quite distracting.

    The music consisted predominantly of banjo music done in a Southern style. It was pretty much unremarkable.

    The surround channels were not used..

    The .1 channel was not used.

    The extras on this DVD consist of still frames for the cast and crew biographies and brief still framed production notes.

    The video quality is very variable, and ranges from acceptable, to marginal, to completely unacceptable (Chapter 21).

    The audio quality is also very variable, ranging from acceptable, to acceptable with a lot of background hiss, to nearly unintelligible (Chapter 21 again).

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Michael Demtschyna
4th November 1998