INT. BEDROOM. CLOSE-UP OF BONNIE PARKER -- DAY
Blonde, somewhat fragile, intelligent in expression. She is putting on make-up with intense concentration and appreciation, applying lipstick and eye make-up. As the
camera slowly pulls back from the closeup we see that we have been looking into a mirror. She is standing before the full-length mirror in her bedroom doing her make-up. She overdoes it in the style of the time: rosebud mouth and so forth. As the film progresses her make-up will be refined until, at the end, there is none.
The camera pulls back and continues to move very slowly throughout the first part of this scene. As the camera continues to move away, we see, by degrees, that BONNIE is naked. Her nudity is never blatantly revealed to the audience, but implied. That is, she should be "covered" in various ways from the camera's P.O.V., but the audience must be aware of her exposure to CLYDE later in the scene. This is the only time in the film that she will ever be this exposed, in all senses of the word, to the audience. Her attitude and appraisal of herself here are touched with
narcissism.
The bedroom itself is a second-story bedroom in a lower- class frame house in Texas. The neighborhood is low income. Though the room reveals its shabby surroundings, it also reveals an attempt by BONNIE to fix it up. Small and corny objets d'art are all over the tops of the bureaus, vanity tables, etc. (Little glass figurines and porcelain statuettes and the like.)
BONNIE finishes admiring herself. She walks from the mirror and moves slowly across the room, the camera moving with her, until she reaches the screened window on the opposite wall. The shade is up. There are no curtains. She looks out the window, looking down, and the camera looks down with her.
by
David Newman & Robert Benton
