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The French Connection (1971)

Rate: 9
Viewed: 6/03, 11/13, 3/25

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11/13: The French Connection isn't what I had in mind when it comes to Best Picture winner of 1971.

I've been left hoping for more, perhaps some classic moments, but they don't come that often. Gene Hackman is okay, so is Roy Scheider. Both are fine actors, and William Friedkin is a master director.

However, The French Connection is a 104-minute film of shadowing, ducking, and car chasing. It's not interesting to watch. The ending seems to ask if all the effort has been worth the sacrifice. Yet I love the scene when the car got taken apart to find the drugs...it's so legendary.

All in all, I'll have to see The French Connection again later.

3/25: The French Connection is a classic in the policier genre, but Best Picture winner?

That's pushing it too far. Even William Friedkin admitted to this, thinking that it was at best a B film. Ditto for Gene Hackman winning the Oscar for Best Actor. Although it's his most famous film, he actually wasn't a top five choice for the role and probably not among ten, twenty, or whatever. William Friedkin never saw Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle and only gave him the role because he could be had for cheap.

But let's be real: it's impossible to think of The French Connection without Gene Hackman coming to mind. The car going after the elevated train is its pièce de résistance. During the filming, William Friedkin knew a big chase was essential to the film but had nothing planned; so he walked a while (fifty-five blocks in all) with his producer in New York City to think of something that would not be a rip-off from Bullitt. Eventually, they did and had to persuade the man in charge to let them use the subway line without going through the formalities. At first, he remarked a few times how difficult the idea would be and then got sold after being offered $40,000 and a one-way ticket to Jamaica. Why? Because the shit would get him fired of which it did when the New York Transit Authority found out after the movie was released.

Everybody is perfectly cast. Roy Scheider was an unknown at the time. When he met William Friedkin for the first time, he got hired on the spot. The rest is history with him going on to achieve movie fame in Jaws. But the story about Fernando Rey is quite amusing. William Friedkin was a fan of foreign films and talked with his producer who to get for certain roles on the international side. If they saw a particular actor in a so-so film, he was simply gotten. When it came to the role of Charnier, they had Francisco Rabal in mind because of Belle de Jour. When the actor arrived at the airport, William Friedkin was looking for him but became mystified after seeing Fernando Rey...a Spanish actor to play a Frenchman. Happily, Rabal ended up doing Sorcerer as one of the four desperate guys.

If anybody deserves an Oscar, it's Gerald B. Greenberg for editing which is brilliant work although William Friedkin did a lot of it, especially the chase. Because of what William Friedkin did and after being impressed with how he handled the meeting with Blake Edwards to make a movie out of Peter Gunn, William Peter Blatty convinced Warner Brothers this was the guy he wanted to go with for The Exorcist, passing over legendary directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Mike Nichols, and Arthur Penn. Mark Rydell was a strong choice as well. Shooting the film on location at tons of locations in New York City and France is brilliant.

All in all, Bullitt, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry are the standard that all policiers must be judged against.