4. Bonnie and Clyde
The Sad: A key and seminal film in the New Hollywood revolution of the '60's and '70's, Arthur Penn's movie portrays the infamous bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde takes place in the 1930's but acts as a metaphor for the counter-culture youth of the 1960's. Exploring topics ranging from love and sex to violence and infamy, Bonnie and Clyde was a perfect lead-in to the American New Wave of dark and meditative films including Badlands and Taxi Driver. The movie sees the young couple Bonnie and Clyde as they go on a crime spree of robbing banks. They revel in their new-found notoriety, reading in awe from newspapers and poems dedicated to their exploits. The two ultimately meet their bloody death at the hands of the police, gunned down in a hailstorm of bullets.
The Silver Lining: I know they're our protagonists, and that part of the allure of the New Hollywood was the conflicted nature of having anti-heroes such as Bonnie and Clyde be at the center of the films. But they were still bank robbers who in real life killed at least 9 police officers and an untold number of other civilians.