Best Picture: #44
Original Release Date: October 9, 1971
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 44 minutes
Director: William Friedkin
Quick Impressions:
My mother hated The French Connection. I can’t so much as think of the title without imagining my mom raving about how awful it was. In fact, she frequently cited it as the nadir of Oscar winners, the quintessential example of how awful movies had become in the 1970s until George Lucas and Steven Spielberg came along and saved Hollywood by making something audiences actually wanted to see again. (She usually brought this up while discussing the tremendous, unexpected success of Star Wars, how the premiere theater in her area didn’t want to show it, how foolish that theater looked when grateful audiences hungry for a good time at the movies made it a runaway hit.)
“Oh we were so grateful when Star Wars came along,” she would say, “because–you don’t understand, Sarah!–movies in the 70s were awful. They were awful! It got so bad that they had to give the Academy Award to The French Connection! The French Connection! They had to do it because there was nothing else! And The French Connection is the most boring movie! Nothing happens! Nothing happens the whole movie! They just drive around! They just get in cars and follow people! The whole movie!”
Because I was a child, I believed my mother. Then (after years of this) when I was in grad school, I started noticing that many movie buffs, cinephiles, and film industry insiders praised The French Connection as one of the greatest movies of its kind ever made. Like my mom, they also described The French Connection as quintessential, but for them it was not an exemplar of boringness. It was instead the quintessential police movie, the archetypal crime film.
Gradually I began to doubt my entire childhood. (Well, okay, maybe not my entire childhood, but my mother’s take on The French Connection for sure.) I mean, she’s been wrong before. I remember how all through my childhood she would complain that Pride and Prejudice was such a boring, lifeless slog of a novel. Then in high school, I had to read it for class, and after just a few pages, I told her, “Mom, this book is hilarious!” (I mean, the first sentence is a one-liner!) She gave it another chance. Then for the next twenty years, she delighted in various TV and film adaptations of Jane Austen’s classic novel, watching them often, unable to get enough Pride and Prejudice.
But after watching The French Connection myself, I must say, I doubt giving the movie a second chance would change my mom’s opinion much. (I’m sure that what the film’s admirers say is also true, of course.)
At one point I asked my daughter, “Where are they going?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “They’re just driving around.”
“That’s one of the things Grandma said about the movie,” I recalled. “They’re always just driving around in cars and nothing happens.”
“Hmm,” said my daughter. “That may just hold up to be true.”
The Plot:
NYPD detectives Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy Russo are always just driving around in cars, and nothing happens. Just kidding. Doyle (whose catchy nickname goes unexplained) and Russo are narcotics detectives feverishly trailing international heroin smugglers, and they don’t just follow guys in cars. They also follow guys on trains, planes, the subway, a ferry, and let’s not forget on foot in a Santa Claus suit. Much of the movie does involve Doyle and Russo tailing (or attempting to tail) the criminals. (They bug their phones, too, so they can continue following them even when everyone (but the camera man) is holding still. A present day remake would surely feature our heroes creating fake Twitter accounts so they could follow multiple criminals at once.) Also involved is a minor celebrity from France who has recently dipped his toe into the world of international crime by agreeing to exploit his fame and status to act as a drug mule. Doyle is particularly determined to work this case right up to the end because he needs a win. He’s sometimes reckless in the pursuit of justice, and his aggressive method of police work has recently resulted in the death of another officer, giving him a reputation he’s eager to eclipse with a dazzling victory. Another officer, Mulderig, dogs Doyle’s steps, bringing up his past failures again and again, but what Doyle manages to do at the end of this crazy case shuts Mulderig right up.
The Good:
The French Connection gets an A+ for atmosphere. It’s so immersive! The filming is clearly done on location, on hectic New York City streets. I’ve never been to New York. (My entire family went without me when I was in college because my parents were chaperoning my younger sister’s choir trip. No siblings allowed. I’m still bitter about that, as you can see, more than twenty years later!) But I have walked around on the streets of many other big cities–London, D.C., New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago, Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, San Diego, that weird part of Athens. (I’m sure there are more places that would qualify. My dad used to be in the hotel business, and it took me forever to learn to drive. I’ve walked a lot of city streets in my day.) (I mean that I’ve traveled as a pedestrian.) (In fact, I would have seen Budapest while the rest of my family was in New York, if they hadn’t forbidden me to participate in alternative spring break because they preferred me to come home to see them back before they all decided to go to New York.)
Watching this film, you feel like you’re right there, in the heart of the city, experiencing it for yourself, trailing the drug smugglers just like Popeye and What’s-His-Name. Midnight Cowboy also takes place on the streets of New York City, but it has a fantasy-like quality to it. I’ve seen that New York before, too–in countless movies. But the way New York is presented here makes it feel familiar. The noise. The crowds. The hectic shuffle. Watching, it’s easy to imagine smells, temperature, your hunger pains, how thrilled you are to finally find pizza! At one moment, my daughter and I yelled in simultaneous excitement, “Steam!” (That’s how you know you’re in a real city. At some random moment, you happen upon a huge flume of steam rising up and filling the air with a shimmering mist and a stale smell.)
Watching, I remembered the time my family vacationed to DC without doing much research. We stayed right down the street from the White House, but on the weekend, nothing in that area was open, and we walked around the streets forlornly, searching for something to eat until we finally found a very tiny place serving Dominican food.
I also frequently thought of Sesame Street as I watched (because, I mean, New York, 1971) and for some reason shopping on Main Street in Disneyland mashed up with shopping in downtown Laredo (and Nuevo Laredo).
I mention all this to underscore how evocative of the city (and actually of any city) this movie is. I watch and remember the time I was wandering around lost in the crowded streets of New York (even though that never happened). And my daughter (who has never been to New York either) had a similar experience.
Watching, I could easily see why so many cinephiles have highly praised this film. We’ve watched more than forty years of Best Picture winners now, and I had never seen anything like this before, no other crime movie presented with such chaotic immediacy. In fact, several elements in The French Connection seemed both innovative (in that I’ve never noticed them in earlier films) and seminal (because I’ve often seen them in later movies).
I love the way the movie throws us into this chaotic world of police work. With a smile, I think of films about police work that my mother did like, Stakeout and Another Stakeout. (She watched those all the time!) There is no time in this film for zany dinner parties or Rosie O’Donnell’s runaway dog. The whole production is as pared down as possible. This is about two detectives working a case, and we experience all of their confusion and excitement along with them, almost like it’s happening to us in real time.
This look at the way a hunch rapidly evolves into a developing case makes you appreciate how difficult a police detective’s job is because real life isn’t scripted. It’s not organized and presented in a methodical way to make it easier to follow. Stuff just happens in real time, and if you’re the one trying to build a case, it’s up to you to make sense of what’s going on as quickly as possible.
Gene Hackman makes a strong impression as Popeye. So many elements of his character remain mysterious (such as why on earth he’s called Popeye. I’ve read online that it’s the nickname of the real-life police detective his character is based on. I’d like a clearer explanation of how he acquired the nickname in the story, though.) This is one of the rare Hollywood movies that takes “show, don’t tell” to the extreme. Just about everything we know about Popeye, we glean from watching the way he performs his job. He’s all action. The only other thing we learn is that he got another officer (his old partner?) killed because of his unorthodox methods, which is hardly surprising given how thoroughly he hurls himself into his cases. But we only know this because of persistent reminders from another officer, the hostile Mulderig (played by Bill Hickman). Hackman’s famous co-star Roy Scheider plays his current partner Buddy Russo pretty unobtrusively. In fact, the only actor who leaves a huge impression is Hackman himself. Well, perhaps Fernando Rey does, too, as the evasive Alain Charnier.
The camera work in the film is almost dizzying given its constant movement, and, tonally, the score matches the cinematography. It’s not exactly cacophonous, but it’s certainly busy.
Runner-Up Best Scene:
Popeye’s attempt to tail someone (even after he has clearly been made) becomes increasingly fraught and, in the end, even somewhat comical. It’s a thought-provoking scene. Popeye continues following this career criminal even though the best case scenario is that the man is trying to shake any potential pursuer. This particular scene is the movie itself in miniature. It’s the story of this case and of Doyle’s whole life. He will always pursue, and the criminals will always run. For Popeye, there’s never an end to the chase.
This particular scene begins with Popeye pursuing his target above ground on foot. The pursuit is fraught. The score starts to sound like someone trying to play jazz on the bongos while being coached by the J.K. Simmons character from Whiplash and, thus, having a panic attack. When Popeye follows his canny target into the subway, each step becomes increasingly spellbinding, finally spiraling into a comic ballet. All along, we suspect the man knows he’s being tailed, and Popeye is not great at being unobtrusive. This scene scored major points with us for being wonderfully atmospheric and making us hungry. And the final moment is hilariously well done.
Just after the chase ends, we join the criminal inside an airplane, and I half expected to see Popeye disguised as a flight attendant, like in the end of Nuns on the Run. By then, the chase had gone on so long that I was in the mood to laugh.
Best Action Sequence/Best Scene:
After an unseen shooter tries to take out Popeye, we get a crazy, runaway train of a scene, not only the best action sequence in this movie, but by far one of the most riveting chases I’ve seen in any movie. In fact, the entire movie is worth watching for this spectacular scene alone.
For one thing, it really seems to have inspired other filmmakers. There’s the crazy gunman on an elevated train, trying to get away (and making the bizarre choice of shooting everyone in his path), and then there’s Popeye pursuing in his car, racing the train from the street below the tracks. I swear I’ve seen a scene almost exactly like this in one of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. Initially, I thought it was in The Dark Knight, but after considering, I’m now wondering if the scene I have in mind is actually from Batman Begins. (It’s also possible that I’m conflating scenes from various Nolan Batmans.) In any case, Christopher Nolan has definitely drawn inspiration from The French Connection (or, possibly, from another filmmaker who drew inspiration from The French Connection). The visual similarities are too pronounced to be mere coincidence. The movie Speed is pretty obviously indebted to this scene, too. It’s the best part of the movie by a mile, and it’s a moment of triumph for Popeye, who fares better when the person he’s chasing makes inexplicably poor decisions (like shooting person after person in a crowded trail full of witnesses when the police are already following him).
Best Scene Visually:
I can’t stand shaky cam, and this film uses it with wild abandon. (Even the opening credits are shaky–I mean the words as they appear on the dark background–which really feels excessive. Why use shaky cam when nothing is even happening, when no one is even there?)
So I’m not a huge fan of the film’s visual aesthetic in general. But there is one thing my daughter and I truly enjoyed–the variety of cars on the streets.
“Ooh! There are so many colors of cars!” she kept saying. “I’ve never seen a car that color!”
“I know!” I’d chime in enthusiastically. “That’s what I keep saying! Cars used to come in a wide variety of colors, and for the past fifteen years are so, they’re all either black, white, or gray. Occasionally you get red, but that’s about it.” I don’t know why car colors have become so muted, limited, and boring in recent years, but I don’t like it. We get far more variety in The French Connection.
So, of course, the film’s best scene visually involves a car, a car apprehended by the police, taken apart, and searched thoroughly for drugs. (You’ll never believe where they’re hiding those drugs!)
Funniest Scene:
My daughter and I found the narcotics raid on the bar hilarious, the way all the patrons panic and empty their pockets, tossing their little bags of drugs all over the bar and floor. And then Popeye’s private conversation with the guy he roughs up, that’s pretty great.
The Negatives:
I feel like I’ve already covered most of what I didn’t like about The French Connection. My mom is right about the limitless pursuit. I do see meaning in it. The chase is Popeye’s whole life, his entire experience of being a cop, what gives him satisfaction, and what keeps him going. He has to chase. He has to pursue. But for Popeye, the chase never ends. Life is one big chase. Were it not, it would lose all meaning. So I think the seemingly endless scenes of surveillance and pursuit the film gives us do have a greater meaning. It isn’t pointless (though it may often be futile). That’s what the entire movie is about. That’s what Popeye is about. Still, my mom’s not wrong. The French Connection gives us a whole lot of chasing around and not much else. Everybody’s always on the move. Too much is happening. There’s no time for anything else, no time for the character development through dialogue that we get in many movies (and my mother obviously expected and required).
The action is also a bit hard to follow. I mean, yes, we know that the police are chasing the drug smugglers. That much is easy to see. But why did they start following them in the first place. Just because they looked a bit suspicious? (The way this plot unfolds made me think a lot about systemic problems with police work. To be successful, you have to have instincts, play hunches, look around for suspicious types. But these same types of skills (which are completely necessary to decide which people to investigate) can also result in profiling in the negative sense. You know, the detectives start to get an idea of what makes someone suspicious, but perhaps their perceptions are a bit skewed because of their years of work in crime, leading them to overgeneralize and become unduly suspicious of people who are doing absolutely nothing wrong simply because they fit a certain type.
For the most part, I found Popeye’s work easy enough to follow. But I did find the criminals’ plot a bit convoluted, needlessly complicated if I was understanding everything correctly. I wish we had a bit more insight into the inner workings of the criminals’ minds. But the movie can’t give us that because it chooses instead simply to show us what happens, letting the action drive the story forward at all times. I prefer stories that give us a bit more dialogue and traditional character building. (It’s not that we don’t get character development. You can tell who people are by watching their actions. I just personally prefer a little dialogue.) Still tastes vary. Everyone looks for something different from a movie.
But the shaky cam is atrocious. For me, that’s the movie’s most egregious fault. Why is it needed in the credits when we only see words on a background? Why is that part shaking? (Is that even shaky cam, or does the movie just need to be restored?)
I understand that we’re getting a taste of the bewildering intensity of being a New York City narcotics detective in action on the street, but I, personally, think the shaky cam should be reserved for frantic action. There are times when Jimmy and Buddy are just calmly talking to each other, and the camera is bobbing all over like it’s been strapped to a duck in a pond on a windy day. That one awesome action sequence I mentioned makes me think fondly of Speed. Most of the rest of the movie has the seasickness-inducing quality of Speed 2.
Overall:
Some sequences in The French Connection are absolutely brilliant and have clearly inspired other directors. Still, while I don’t agree with my mother’s take that the film is boring, the movie does rely a bit too heavily on action to show us character development for my personal tastes. For the chase above and below the train track alone, though, the movie is well worth watching. In fact, I’d like to watch it again. My husband hasn’t seen it yet, so maybe I will.