BONNIE AND CLYDE Returns to Theaters Nationwide August 13th and 16th

“This here’s Miss Bonnie Parker. I’m Clyde Barrow. We rob banks.”

Fifty years ago, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde made Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway into genuine superstars, building on the tale of a real-life crime spree that had enthralled America in the 1920s. Bonnie and Clyde smashed through almost every cinematic taboo, combining violence, sex, romance, action and comedy in groundbreaking ways.

On August 13, 50 years to the day from its original theatrical release, Bonnie and Clyde returns to theaters nationwide, presented by Fathom Events and the TCM Big Screen Classics Series.  Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Bonnie and Clyde won two Oscars and presaged a cultural obsession with public notoriety at any price.

Bonnie and Clyde will play in more than 600 theaters nationwide on Sunday, August 13, and Wednesday, August 16, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. each day.

For theater information, go to the Fathom Events site HERE

TCM Primetime host Ben Mankiewicz will offer newly produced commentary before and after the film — a movie whose legacy paved the way for films like Natural Born Killers, The Fast and the Furious and Baby Driver.

Its initial release, on Aug. 13, 1967, set off shock waves.  In his original review, Roger Ebert called Bonnie and Clyde “the definitive film of the 1960s, showing with sadness, humor and unforgiving detail what one society had become.”  The film’s poster showed the eponymous couple in the throes of death — a death that cemented their celebrity status.  And if there’s anything Bonnie and Clyde, as embodied by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, truly hope for, it’s notoriety — to become known for their violent exploits.

Though it was made 50 years ago — and was itself a tale that had taken place 30 years prior to that — Bonnie and Clyde remains not just a great American film but also one that shows the seeds of our current cultural obsessions.  Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow would be even more at home, perhaps, in a society that glamorizes fast cars, violent lifestyles and celebrity status.  (It’s not hard to imagine the title duo Instagramming their every moment or broadcasting a robbery on Facebook Live).