Arthur Penn was pioneer of film violence

Arthur Penn, the screen and theater director whose "Bonnie and Clyde" single-handedly blasted cinematic violence into a new realm in 1967, died Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 88. The cause was heart failure.

Penn was 44 when he made the youth-centric classic about Depression-era gangsters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, but star/producer Warren Beatty - who'd previously acted in Penn"s "Mickey One" - selected the filmmaker after Francois Truffaut turned the project down.

"Bonnie and Clyde" polarized critics and was shortchanged by its studio, Warner Bros.