Arthur Penn, 1922–2010

For his 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, a Depression-era outlaw tale, Arthur Penn said he “wanted an ending that was simply not just violent. I wanted one that would, in a certain sense, transport—lift it—into legend.” The film’s final scene, shot by four cameras operating at different speeds, is considered one of the greatest in cinematic history. A hail of bullets cut through the hero and heroine as they writhe, blood-soaked, in what Penn called a “ballet of dying.” Bonnie and Clyde’s graphic violence, framed by the turbulence of the Vietnam War, announced a new era in American film.

Born in Philadelphia, Penn was the son of a watchmaker and a nurse, who divorced when he was 3. He moved with his mother and older brother—Irving Penn, the celebrated photographer—to New York, where the family bounced between homes. At 14, Penn returned to live with his father in Philadelphia, where this “lonely kid” took refuge in the theater, directing shows for a local amateur playhouse, said the Los Angeles Times. He served as an infantryman in Europe during World War II and joined the Soldier Show Company when the war ended. After attending college in North Carolina and Italy, Penn moved to New York and worked as a floor manager for NBC television studios. There, in 1953, an Army buddy offered him a job directing First Person, a series of live teleplays, said The Washington Post. Other assignments followed, including directing William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller, which earned rave reviews.

Penn parlayed his television success into work on Broadway, where he directed a stream of hits, including Two for the Seesaw with Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft. Sensing he was “on a roll,” Penn went to Hollywood, said The New York Times. The Left-Handed Gun, his first film, a Western starring Paul Newman as an “unstable outsider who resorts to violence when rejected by an uncaring establishment,” presaged Penn’s preoccupation with antiheroes. The film flopped, but Penn’s 1962 version of The Miracle Worker was a critical and commercial hit, earning him the first of three Academy Award nominations.

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Penn went on to direct memorable films including Alice’s Restaurant, with Arlo Guthrie, and Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman. But “none of Penn’s other films had the impact of Bonnie and Clyde,” said the Associated Press. Warren Beatty, who was a producer as well as star of the film, had to convince Penn to direct it, offering him wide creative latitude. The film “appalled the old and fascinated the young, widening a generational divide.”

Marketed with the flippant line: “They’re young … they’re in love … and they kill people,” Bonnie and Clyde helped pave the way for a rebellious generation of Hollywood directors that included Bob Rafelson, Robert Altman, and others eager to emulate the riskier styles and subjects of European films. Penn said he was sorry his father had died without seeing his films, because “movies rescued me.”