A.O. Scott had a great piece in the arts section of the Times this weekend on Bonnie and Clyde in which he explores how that film gave birth to the stylized violence in cinema that continues to this day. It's a strong piece that actually could be taken one step further - the ability of hollywood to manipulate history.

Bonnie and Clyde were psychopathic murderers. When they were killed the praise in the press was near universal. They killed brutally, randomly and without mercy. Bullets were used to clean up mistakes. Luckily for them Bonnie was a bit of poet (untalented, but a poet nonetheless), and after their death, her poems became a way for pulp writers to portray them as modern day Robin Hoods.

But it was really the film that cemented the legend of the outlaws into popular culture. Although not the first version of their story, this film became the definitive one. The casting of Dunaway and Beatty made the outlaws beautiful and romantic, criminals the ordinary person would like to be. The fantasy completely reworked the reality. The film was even embellished with incidents borrowed from the exploits of another 1930’s gangster, John Dillinger. These included the refusal of Clyde to take money from a customer during a bank hold-up and Buck Barrow’s straw-hatted, and quite uncharacteristic, leap over the barrier in the bank was lifted from Dillinger.

By re-imaging the two killers, the film transformed their violence from something awful to something cinematic changing not only the history of cinema but also just, plain history.