Oscars Retrospective: The French Connection (44th Academy Awards Review)
Ah, the film noir, one of the most classic types of film genres that can flip a switch for a specific type of cinephile into total delight. Cops and robbers stories had existed since the dawn of cinema and the heavy dark shadows that define the genre draws its influence from the Expressionism Wave of Weimar Germany during the Roaring 20s. But starting with The Maltese Falcon (1941) (which itself was influenced by Citizen Kane (1941)), crime thrillers would start blending these shadows with cop protagonists who were a little more cynical, world-weary and occasionally morally onerous. This would be one of the genres that defined the 1940s and gained a second wind in Europe, with the retroactive name of film noir being used to describe these movies. A lot of these noirs would influence the French New Wave which in turn would influence the Hollywood New Wave.
We’ve discussed previously how one trend in Hollywood that fascinates me is the trend of decade nostalgia and how it goes back further than you think if you thought that 2010s Hollywood’s obsession with the 80s got a bit obnoxious at times. This is the belief that pop culture works in 30-year increments, with the main moviegoing-and-making audience of young adults being eager to see nostalgic throwbacks to movies replicating their youth. During the 70s, there was definitely a huge trend of crime thrillers that were a lot bleaker and darker and would be considered neo-noirs (in other words, noirs but in color). I don’t know if this was a trend because people were nostalgic for the 40s or if because pop cinema wanted movies that were more challenging of their values or if they wanted movies that reflected the humongous crime wave that was beginning to sweep America and wouldn’t die down until the early 90s. Like all cultural trends, the answer is probably a combination of all three.
Anyway, that brings us to The French Connection. Considering the esteemed reputation this movie has, I was surprised to learn that it actually has a pretty simple and straightforward plot. It revolves around a French criminal named Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) who plans to smuggle about $32,000,000 worth of pure, uncut heroin into New York City. Hot on his tail are NYPD detectives, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner Buddy “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider), who slowly unearth the case to bring Charnier to justice. And that’s really about it. It’s a cops and robbers movie set in New York City circa 1971.
And what an awesome one it is. Again, The French Connection is a picture that is very frequently included on lists of greatest movies of all time so, going in, I was expecting a film noir or crime thriller that has musings on police work in the 70s. And while it is definitely that (and more on that in a minute), the pleasant surprise is that The French Connection is also, by and large, an action movie. Once the exposition is gotten out of the way, pretty much the entire rest of the movie is Popeye, Cloudy and their fellow policemen chasing Charnier all over New York City, alternately trying to either tail him or sting him.
We’ve discussed previously how one trend in Hollywood that fascinates me is the trend of decade nostalgia and how it goes back further than you think if you thought that 2010s Hollywood’s obsession with the 80s got a bit obnoxious at times. This is the belief that pop culture works in 30-year increments, with the main moviegoing-and-making audience of young adults being eager to see nostalgic throwbacks to movies replicating their youth. During the 70s, there was definitely a huge trend of crime thrillers that were a lot bleaker and darker and would be considered neo-noirs (in other words, noirs but in color). I don’t know if this was a trend because people were nostalgic for the 40s or if because pop cinema wanted movies that were more challenging of their values or if they wanted movies that reflected the humongous crime wave that was beginning to sweep America and wouldn’t die down until the early 90s. Like all cultural trends, the answer is probably a combination of all three.
Anyway, that brings us to The French Connection. Considering the esteemed reputation this movie has, I was surprised to learn that it actually has a pretty simple and straightforward plot. It revolves around a French criminal named Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) who plans to smuggle about $32,000,000 worth of pure, uncut heroin into New York City. Hot on his tail are NYPD detectives, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner Buddy “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider), who slowly unearth the case to bring Charnier to justice. And that’s really about it. It’s a cops and robbers movie set in New York City circa 1971.
And what an awesome one it is. Again, The French Connection is a picture that is very frequently included on lists of greatest movies of all time so, going in, I was expecting a film noir or crime thriller that has musings on police work in the 70s. And while it is definitely that (and more on that in a minute), the pleasant surprise is that The French Connection is also, by and large, an action movie. Once the exposition is gotten out of the way, pretty much the entire rest of the movie is Popeye, Cloudy and their fellow policemen chasing Charnier all over New York City, alternately trying to either tail him or sting him.
The film is actually based on a real-life sting of a French-based heroin smuggling ring though, besides that set-up, it has very little with the real story.
The French Connection is straight-up fun to watch. What’s great about it is how it feels a lot more real than action movies of both the past and future in how the chases proceed. The grit is on full display and the way that Popeye and Cloudy follow Charnier and his fellow ne’er-do-wells seem reminiscent of how a real cop would tail a bad guy. A lot of swapping eyes on multiple street corners, always keeping a distance, trying to blend into a crowd, trying to make the same train without making a big show of it. There aren’t any shootouts or people killed until the end of the movie so they do a great job at adding a lot of variety to these different scenes to keep the story moving.
It’s pretty interesting too because this is very divorced and different from the rest of William Friedkin’s filmography. He was definitely in the vogue of the classic New Hollywood auteur, being most famous for dark dramas like The Boys in the Band (1970) and The Exorcist (1973). The French Connection doesn’t seem like it has too much in common with those movies but what Friedkin brings to it is his documentarian’s eye. The French Connection is shot in mostly long and master shots, giving the movie a more authentic feeling to it that makes it seem like this is something that actually happened.
This sort of gritty style pays off in what is by far the most famous, and best, scene; that being the car chase about two-thirds of the way through. In this scene, one of Charnier’s henchmen (Marcel Bozzuffi) hijacks a train on the elevated track in Gravesend (south Brooklyn) and Popeye gives chase in a car on the street below, crashing into just about everything in his desperate quest to ensure that he doesn’t lose the train. Supposedly, this scene was inspired when Friedkin watched Bullitt (1968), saw that it was getting a reputation as the most exciting car chase in film history up to that point and set out to one-up it. And, needless to say, he succeeded. The car chase in Bullitt may have been revolutionary but this one is more harrowing to watch. Even to an audience who was raised on a diet of 80s-2000s action movies growing up, this is still pretty exciting simply because Popeye’s car looks like it’s on the verge of not being able to even run by the end of it.
So that’s why The French Connection made a huge splash and why it’s still great to watch 50 years later. But why did it pop off so much that it became a contender for (let alone the winner of) the coveted Academy Award for Best Picture? Well, earlier I said that film noirs would feature protagonists who were somewhat morally onerous but that statement has an asterisk attached to it. The noirs of the classic era of the genre featured protagonists who were definitely more world-weary, cynical and have made mistakes in life but still had a solid moral code. Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon is considered the archetype of this character and provided a good template most of these movies would imitate/pay homage to. He has some problems with women, he doesn’t expect much of humanity but he would ultimately do the right thing in the end. Even later noir protagonists who were more overt villains (e.g. Tyrone Power as Stan Carlisle in Nightmare Alley (1947)) would ultimately find their conscience by the end of the picture. This might have been different cultural values or it might have been because the Hays Code made creating a truly grey protagonist far more difficult than it should have been.
This brings us to Gene Hackman as Inspector Popeye Doyle, who is one of the first truly dirty cops in movie history. On an individual level, there is almost nothing redeemable about this guy. He cheats on his wife, he’s racist, he’s violent, he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor and he constantly seems like he’s looking for an excuse to lash out at anyone who gets in his way. This is a new type of cop, being made by a generation of artists who had probably ended up on the wrong side of the law at one point or another during the counterculture and, thus, had a pretty low opinion of the police. This is a man who will do anything to catch the criminals that he has been assigned to bring to justice, even if it means frequently breaking the law in his favor.
This sort of moral ambiguity is what makes The French Connection fit right at home in the New Hollywood generation. In later cops-and-robber films in the 80s and 90s, a dirty cop would either redeem himself, be the villain or be justifiable in an “ends justify the means” moral. The French Connection doesn’t go for any of those routes but, even more interesting is that it doesn’t harp on it all that much. They give just enough story to get you involved in the character of Popeye, understand what he’s about and then the chases begin.
Fun fact: fast food baron, Big Al Copeland, actually named his fried chicken chain Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen after this movie, not the cartoon sailor.
Without giving it away, The French Connection does have a dark ending that ties into this moral ambiguity of the Popeye character. It’s very jarring and out-of-left-field but what I find most interesting is how well it works. When you add it all up, there really isn’t a whole lot of screentime devoted to the subplot of Popeye’s dislike of his superiors and the people he’s supposed to protect and serve. Almost all of these character traits are established in the first opening act of the movie and then are only casually referenced during the rest of the breakneck chases. But when you get to the ending and see what Popeye does and where he ends up, you remember all of the little clues throughout the movie and find yourself disappointed that someone you were rooting for so much would end up doing something like this. Yet, when you think back on the rest of the movie, you see that this was practically written in stone.
The French Connection is a perfect case study of efficient pacing in a movie. Many other movies at the time would couch its themes in long and slow character studies and complex characters. Here, the characters are all very simple types who you can easily identify with and it allows you to both have a good time and actually think after it’s all over. Yet everyone still feels real. Charnier seems a lot closer to what a cheeky globe-trotting criminal would seem like as opposed to many criminals in latter-day Bond and Schwarzenegger films. The societal commentary is there but it never overpowers the fun of the chase.
The last key to this is, of course, the New York Gothic. This is a great time capsule of New York in the early 70s, about 4 years before the city was on the brink of bankruptcy, so you can imagine how nice it looks (which is to say, not at all). What I like too is how the movie isn’t set entirely in Manhattan but goes through quite a bit of the outer boroughs as well. You see Gravesend, as mentioned, the part of Williamsburg around the Brooklyn Bridge, some of Queens. For me, the biggest treat is that there’s a scene set in DUMBO and it’s interesting to see what a dump that neighborhood used to be before they turned it into a tech Mecca around the turn of the millennium.
The French Connection is the type of fun action movie that has long since died out and Hollywood would never feel brave enough to make again: a morally grey one. It’s great fun to watch but also doesn’t shy away from or hide from some of the worst parts of humanity. Gene Hackman is excellent in it and it’s also one of those movies that only gets better and better every time you rewatch it. Definitely one of the greats.
But did it deserve to be called movie of the year?
The French Connection is a perfect case study of efficient pacing in a movie. Many other movies at the time would couch its themes in long and slow character studies and complex characters. Here, the characters are all very simple types who you can easily identify with and it allows you to both have a good time and actually think after it’s all over. Yet everyone still feels real. Charnier seems a lot closer to what a cheeky globe-trotting criminal would seem like as opposed to many criminals in latter-day Bond and Schwarzenegger films. The societal commentary is there but it never overpowers the fun of the chase.
The last key to this is, of course, the New York Gothic. This is a great time capsule of New York in the early 70s, about 4 years before the city was on the brink of bankruptcy, so you can imagine how nice it looks (which is to say, not at all). What I like too is how the movie isn’t set entirely in Manhattan but goes through quite a bit of the outer boroughs as well. You see Gravesend, as mentioned, the part of Williamsburg around the Brooklyn Bridge, some of Queens. For me, the biggest treat is that there’s a scene set in DUMBO and it’s interesting to see what a dump that neighborhood used to be before they turned it into a tech Mecca around the turn of the millennium.
The French Connection is the type of fun action movie that has long since died out and Hollywood would never feel brave enough to make again: a morally grey one. It’s great fun to watch but also doesn’t shy away from or hide from some of the worst parts of humanity. Gene Hackman is excellent in it and it’s also one of those movies that only gets better and better every time you rewatch it. Definitely one of the greats.
But did it deserve to be called movie of the year?
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