Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum / Bonnie and Clyde, 1967

Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum | A rich weekend of films inspired by the exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out / From the Marie and Jose Mugrabi Collection.
Artistic Director: Karin Rywkind Segal

The screenings will be accompanied by introductions from the Museum’s curators and guest lecturers.

—

Bonnie and Clyde

USA, 1967 | Director: Arthur Penn | Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman | 111 min., English with Hebrew subtitles

Arthur Penn’s groundbreaking film, produced by and starring Warren Beatty, is widely regarded as one of the defining works of the New Hollywood movement. Originally intended to be directed by François Truffaut, it is based on the true story of Depression-era outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

Although Warner Bros., which financed the production, expected little commercial success, Bonnie and Clyde became both a critical and box-office triumph. It received ten Academy Award nominations and won two Oscars. Released amid the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the rise of the American counterculture, the film spoke directly to a younger generation eager for a new, daring, and uncompromising cinema. On screen, Bonnie and Clyde emerged as enduring icons of rebellion and freedom, capturing the spirit of the era in which the film was made.

Penn’s achievement lies in his brilliant synthesis of French New Wave influences and the traditions of classical American cinema. Reimagining the gangster film, he infused the genre with a bold, highly stylized cinematic language. Although the story unfolds during the 1930s Great Depression, its treatment of the body, sexuality, and rebellion belongs unmistakably to the 1960s—the same decade in which Tom Wesselmann redefined representations of the body and desire in American art. The film opens with an iconic extreme close-up of Bonnie’s bright red lips, an image that immediately recalls the enlarged lips that recur in Wesselmann’s work. Both the film and Wesselmann’s art transform seductive visual motifs into enduring icons of popular culture. In each, the challenge to social and aesthetic conventions is inseparable from the seductive power of the image, as rebellion itself becomes absorbed into the language of Pop culture.

—

The exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out, currently on view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, provides the point of departure for a weekend film program devoted to America in the 1960s and 1970s. Wesselmann’s work emerged from a visual culture saturated with images of the body, advertising, and consumerism, at a moment when American society was undergoing profound social and cultural change. The program expands the exhibition’s perspective through a selection of films that capture the spirit of the era: the counterculture; growing skepticism toward institutions and authority; shifting ideas about sexuality, femininity, and gender; the struggle for civil rights; and the social and political critique that defined the years of the Vietnam War.

—

Note: Film introductions will be in Hebrew.
The number of participants is limited | Advance reservations are required for all participants.
—

For more information on “Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum” and the full screening program >

—

Image: © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc