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The French Connection (1971)
Rate:
9
Viewed:
6/03, 11/13, 3/25
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 it was at best a B film.
Ditto for Gene Hackman winning the Oscar for Best Actor. Although it's his most famous work, 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.
The car going after the elevated train is the 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 then 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 was 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 about 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 got 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 the 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 at
tons of locations in New York City and France is brilliant as well.
All in all, Bullitt, The French Connection, and
Dirty Harry are the standard that all policiers must be judged against.