1967 was one of those great transitional years in film making and Bonnie & Clyde is a perfect example of it. You can tell even from the first few minutes of the movie that this is something new, that its drastically different from things that came immediately before it. That's not to say that it doesn't have its forerunners in earlier films, The Live By Night from 1948 is very similar plot wise, and Europe was already doing pictures of a similar mood by the time this movie came out. Still to have a film that dealt not just with violence, but with sex the way this movie does must have been extraordinary. The subplot involving Clydes impotence and Bonnie's sexual hunger feels quite provocative, racy and pioneering. This is also Gene Wilder's first film by the way, marvel at how the whole 'Gene Wilder persona' seems so completely established in this first cinematic outing, though in some ways his whole sequence in the movie feels like its from another film.
A sequel to one of the great films of 1967 (in fact that years best picture Oscar winner) In the Heat of the Night, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs is no where near as good. Sidney Poitier reprises the Virgil Tibbs role, but here for a rather unremarkable police procedural. While in Night Tibbs is said to have come from Philadelphia, here he is for some reason transplanted to San Fransisco, where he must investigate a popular liberal preacher accused of murdering a prostitute. The cop stuff is good, but I never quite buy Martin Landau as the preacher and the whole subplot involving Tibbs family seems just there and never really gels. On the whole it felt more like an episode of a solid but not exceptional 70's cop show.
Bonnie & Clyde: A
They Call Me Mr. Tibbs: C
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