Bonnie and Clyde (Warner Bros.)

"They're young, they're in love and they kill people," goes one of the more effective taglines in Hollywood history. This week's top pick is of course a defining film of the antiestablishment 1960s, one that helped transform both American popular movies and the way American audiences "read" popular movies.

This 1967 gangster opus, inspired by the legendary Depression-era bandits and lovers, was a surprise sensation as it imported stylistic punch from the French New Wave while at the same time taking the spaces out of the phrase "sex and violence."

A myth-maker both on and behind the screen, it was shocking in '67 and today remains fresh as a thrilling, often darkly funny, and exquisitely made classic. It still hits us with an ending that, in the modern argot, ain't nuttin' like a gangsta party. Critic David Thomson, in his retrospective appreciation in L.A. Weekly, observes that "death was their best moment; it was when they looked in each other's eyes with rapture and knew that machine-gun bullets were the trigger for the shuddering orgasm they longed for." As Glenn Erickson puts it in his consideration of this new DVD, the final scene's "blast of psychic overkill ushered in a new era of explicit violence for mainstream movies.... Forty years later, in a culture grown even more bloodthirsty, Bonnie and Clyde has retained its kick."

Finally, Roger Ebert closes his "Great Movies" piece on Bonnie and Clyde with, "When I saw it, I had been a film critic for less than six months, and it was the first masterpiece I had seen on the job. I felt an exhilaration beyond describing. I did not suspect how long it would be between such experiences, but at least I learned that they were possible."

Naturally, Faye and Warren will always be remembered as Bonnie and Clyde's glamorous celebrity outlaw lovers. As the new DVD extras point out, Beatty also went on bended knee as the film's never-say-die producer, championing this radical and disturbing creation before an industry ready to kill it, dump the body, and forget it had ever breathed.

His persistence paid off when Bonnie and Clyde turned into a commercial and ultimately critical smash for Warner Brothers, picking up ten Oscar nominations that included wins for supporting actress Estelle Parsons and cinematographer Burnett Guffey.

And let's not forget the terrific work we get here from director Arthur Penn, editor Dede Allen, and a cast of relative unknowns such as Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Denver Pyle, and Gene Wilder in his big-screen debut one year before The Producers and four years before he became Willy Wonka.

For the film's 40th (more or less) anniversary, Warner Bros. has given Bonnie and Clyde a fully restored and remastered new release, and -- boy howdy! -- it's a thing of beauty. The image is rich and sharp and just shy of flawless. Various purchase options offer a assortment of extras.

The "Two-Disc Special Edition" hands us a superb new documentary about the production, Revolution! The Making of Bonnie and Clyde, by Laurent Bouzereau. It's presented in three parts -- "Bonnie and Clyde's Gang" (22 minutes), "The Reality and Myth of Bonnie and Clyde" (24 mins.), and "Releasing Bonnie and Clyde" (18 mins.) -- and features new reminiscences from Beatty, Dunaway, Hackman, Pollard, Parsons, director Penn, screenwriter Robert Benton, editor Dede Allen, creative consultant Robert Towne, Morgan Fairchild (Faye Dunaway's stand-in), costume designer Theadora Van Runkle, art director Dean Tavoularis, press agent Mick Guttman, and L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson (who, as a young photographer, had a hand in landing Faye Dunaway in the role of Bonnie Parker; Hanson's "payment" was being allowed to shadow the crew in Texas during production).

Another worthwhile documentary here is a History Channel biography of the real-life couple, Love and Death: The Story of Bonnie and Clyde (43 mins.). Turns out that when they met, Clyde was only 20 years old and Bonnie was 19. The doc includes film footage shot on-site at their death car, which is been so riddled with bullets that it's falling apart (like the bodies glimpsed inside it). We also see their bodies laid out ("fans" tried to cut pieces off Clyde's corpse), then shots of the funeral, which was a public spectacle with thousands of people lined up to goggle at a morbid piece of history.

Finally, rounding out the Two-Disc Special Edition are two deleted scenes (minus their audio, which has been lost, but subtitled from the shooting script), the teaser and theatrical trailers, and Warren Betty Wardrobe Tests (7 mins.).

The handsomely packaged "Ultimate Collector's Edition" holds all that plus a 36-page book, a reproduction of the original pressbook, and a mail-in poster offer. The Blu-ray disc reproduces the "Ultimate Collector's Edition" with all the video material on a single disc.

DVD Beaver has posted a review of the Blu-ray edition, with specs and screenshots.

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