It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards including for Best Picture, winning Best Supporting Actress (for Estelle Parsons) and Best Cinematography (Burnett Guffey).

[5] In 1992, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In Joplin, Missouri, local police show up at the gang's rented house after being alerted by a grocery delivery boy; two policemen are killed in a shootout.

The gang is pursued by law enforcement, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, whom they capture and humiliate before setting him free.

Bonnie wants to visit her family in Texas and give them part of the heist funds, to which Clyde reluctantly acquiesces despite the risk.

When Bonnie and Clyde stop on the side of the road to help Mr. Moss fix a flat tire, as a nearby flock of birds flies away, the posse in the bushes gun the couple down.

When the filmmakers noticed Mabel Cavitt, a local schoolteacher, among the people gathered, she was cast as Bonnie Parker's mother.

[10] Arthur Penn portrayed some of the violent scenes with a comic tone, sometimes reminiscent of Keystone Cops-style slapstick films, then shifted disconcertingly into horrific and graphic violence.

[11] The film has the French New Wave directors' influence, both in its rapid shifts of tone, and in its choppy editing, which is particularly noticeable in its closing sequence.

He purportedly took offense when would-be producer Norah Wright objected that his desire was unreasonable, as the story took place in Texas, which has a warm climate year-round.

Beatty changed his approach and convinced the writers that while the script at first reading was very much of the French New Wave style, an American director was necessary for the subject.

[19] Beatty offered the directing position to George Stevens, William Wyler, Karel Reisz, John Schlesinger, Brian G. Hutton, and Sydney Pollack, all of whom turned it down.

Considered for the role were Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, Sharon Tate, Leslie Caron, Carol Lynley and Sue Lyon.

Penn persuaded the writers that since the couple's relationship was underwritten in terms of emotional complexity, it dissipated the passion of the title characters.

Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first films to feature extensive use of squibs—small explosive charges, often mounted with bags of stage blood, that detonate inside an actor's clothes to simulate bullet hits.

"[25] Warner complained about the costs of the film's extensive location shooting in Texas, which exceeded its production schedule and budget, and ordered the crew back to the studio backlot.

[26] "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Flatt and Scruggs, the instrumental banjo piece, was introduced to a worldwide audience as a result of its frequent use in the movie.

[31][page needed] The film is considered to stray far from fact in its portrayal of Frank Hamer as a vengeful bungler who was captured, humiliated, and released by Bonnie and Clyde.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie.

[42] Dave Kaufman of Variety criticized the film for uneven direction and for portraying Bonnie and Clyde as bumbling moronic types.

[44] [A]s a re-creation of reality, Bonnie and Clyde can only be described as dishonest ... neither Faye Dunaway nor Warren Beatty acts in a proper Thirties mode, nor do they seem to understand the feelings of the desperate and the underprivileged.

The actress' willowy modern charm is no more appropriate to the lethal, serpentine coldness of the real Bonnie Parker than the actors' sensitive, matinee idol's looks have the right style for the shoddy vanity of Clyde Barrow.

He called the film "a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance", adding, "It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful.

[48][49] Stephen Hunter, writing in Commentary in 2009, criticized the film's failure to adhere to the historical truth about Barrow, Parker, and Hamer.

This film chronicles what occurred as a result: The New York Times fired Crowther because his negative review seemed so out of touch with public opinion.

Pauline Kael, who wrote a lengthy freelance essay in The New Yorker in praise of the film,[51] was hired as the magazine's new staff critic.

[12] The film was not expected to perform well at the box office but was a sleeper hit and by year's end had earned $2.5 million in theatrical rentals in the US and Canada.

The site's consensus states: "A paradigm-shifting classic of American cinema, Bonnie and Clyde packs a punch whose power continues to reverberate through thrillers decades later.

[69] Fifty years after its premiere, Bonnie and Clyde has been cited as a major influence for such disparate films as The Wild Bunch, The Godfather, The Departed, Queen & Slim,[70] True Romance, and Natural Born Killers.

[71] The "Storage Jars" skit of episode 33 of Monty Python's Flying Circus features a brief still shot of Beatty as Clyde firing a Thompson submachine gun as he escapes from the Red Crown Tourist Court.