Ironically, it has to be said, the thing that occupied my mind the most whilst waiting to report a stolen handbag recently, was an article in a three month old spanish magazine. The several paged feature told the real story (or at least as close to real as it could be) of Bonnie and Clyde.
What i found most remarkable, wasn't that Hollywood had once again managed to glamourise the story of two of America's most sought after criminals, wanted for bank robberies, car theft and the murder of a dozen federal officers - but rather that the truth behind the lives of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow far surpassed the brutality that any tinsel-town film has ever portrayed before. And although off course filmmaking in the sixties still involved restrictions in scenes of a sexual or violent nature and more delicate social issues, the last of the Bonnie and Clyde films released in 1967 still demonstrates this incredibly watered down almost, dare i say, laughable story. It seems to me that in actual fact a more accurate portrayal of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrows lives would have made for a far better and darker love story than Hollywood delivered.
