Classic Movie Review: The French Connection
By Josh Spiegel
One of the great pleasures of American cinema in the past 50 years has been the sound of Gene Hackman yelling. I have no idea why this is, but Hackman’s voice raised to its highest pitch is one of the most cheering things I can imagine film ever bringing to audiences. For roughly 40 years, Hackman stood alongside Robert Duvall and few others as one of the best American actors, someone who was always working, someone who was always elevating himself above material when it was required, but someone whose work was never as flashy as some of his peers. Though his first big film role was in the 1967 crime drama Bonnie and Clyde, the first time when Gene Hackman proved his worth as a muscular, forceful star was in the 1971 Best Picture Oscar winner, The French Connection.
The French Connection is one of the rarest Best Picture winners I’ve ever seen, and a great example of a movie that can win an Oscar and still be an action movie of sorts. No, we’re not talking about something like Transformers here, but there’s no denying that The French Connection, directed by William Friedkin (who won an Oscar for his work), is a procedural in many senses of the word. For whatever reason, what I kept comparing the movie to while I was watching is the HBO series The Wire. The Wire is a great television program that’s about the gritty of the world of crime, seen from the eyes of cops and criminals. That show is frequently compelling, if not always filled with heated interrogations, shootouts, and so forth. Now, make no mistake: The French Connection has plenty of action, but it is also meant to be as realistic as possible.
Take the film’s signature scene, a breathless car chase through the streets of Brooklyn. The context is this: Hackman’s character, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, a hard-bitten New York cop, is frantically trying to catch a French hitman who just tried to kill him in broad daylight in front of innocent bystanders. The hitman is also heavily tied to drug trafficking that Popeye is trying to stop; he’s currently riding a subway train, trying to outrun the angry detective. Popeye is trying to drive faster than the train, to beat the hitman to the next stop on the subway line. The stakes aren’t incredibly high, but when you watch the scene from the point of view of the car’s windshield - and see trucks, vans, and sedans slam into the car Popeye’s commandeered - it’s hard not to unconsciously grab onto something in suspense.
In most movies, the car chase would go on and the car Popeye drives wouldn’t get hit, or it’d barely get hit. Here, the car’s not so lucky, and Popeye looks worse for wear. The end of the scene is a well-known image of the film, where Popeye shoots the hitman in the back as he runs up the stairs to the subway platform. What gets us to that point is one of the most appropriately lauded chase scenes in film history. I’d heard plenty about it beforehand, but was shocked to realize that I was still freaking out when I saw Popeye come this close to running over a woman and the cradle she’s pushing down the street. Friedkin’s you-are-there-no-seriously-you-are-really-there style of directing is still unique today, and should be envied by anyone who calls themselves an action movie director.
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