Another one of director William Friedkin’s 1970s big hitters, The French Connection was a landmark piece of cinema in 1971.
After this he landed The Exorcist (1973) on the world, but this one was more about bringing a sense of unpleasant reality to the cinema.
Gritty and realistic, the action thriller starred Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. Although it’s showing its age in places, there’s no denying it still leaves a lasting impact on modern viewing.
Drugs and Dodgy Cops in The French Connection
The French Connection was adapted from the eponymous 1969 book by Robin Moore. This was a non-fiction work based on the activities of US detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso.
The pair pursued a French heroin smuggler called Alain Charnier.
Unusually, Egan and Grosso both have roles in The French Connection as detectives. Egan even pursued a career in acting after the success of this film.
The two leads characters in this film are fictional versions of those two. We have Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider).
The film begins in Marseilles with Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey—a famous Spanish film, theatre, and TV actor) plotting to smuggle $32 million worth of heroin into the US. He plans to hide it in a car of his friend Henri Devereaux (Frédéric de Pasquale).
Meanwhile, in New York, Popeye and his detective partner Cloudy begin to track a young couple called Sal and Angie Boca.
Popeye also exposes the more “full on” approach to his detective work.
The point of this Popeye character is he’s a great detective. He’s just also a bastard—racist and sexist. But he does, kind of, have the capacity to understand what is ultimately right.
However, he often winds up his peers and clashes frequently with his superiors and the FBI. The two roles are for Captain Walt Simonson (Eddie Egan) and FBI Agent Clyde Klein (Sonny Grosso). Again, the two real life detectives behind the story.
Popeye’s investigative work eventually leads him to understand about the heroin shipment. He begins tracking down Charnier, who’s onto his games.
Eventually, Charnier uses his hitman employee Pierre Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi) to try and take out Popeye, but the assassination attempt fails.
Furious, Popeye gives chase after the no good hoodlum.
The legendary car chase scene in The French Connection that follows is, indeed, the stuff of legend. It set a new bar for action films going forward, with realistic stunts and (again) that gritty realism.
The scene still works really well and must have been revolutionary in 1971, we can see why it’s talked up to the extent it still is.
And the film then winds itself up with Charnier and Popeye having a head-to-head standoff after the latter unearths his heroin smuggling plot.
The French Connection does end in a bit of an odd way.
There’s a shootout between the cops and drug dealers before Charnier legs it one into a building. Popeye pursues him, there’s a gunshot, then title cards abruptly cut in and announce the fates of various characters in the film.
Bit weird by modern standards, but very ’70s style.
That’s the one issue we do have with the film. As strong as it is, and with excellent performances all round, it’s showing its age in places. Simply as thrillers have moved on a great deal since 1971.
Acknowledged that doesn’t diminish what Friedkin achieved here as it laid down the foundations for many an excellent thriller for the decades ahead.
You think of modern classics such as Sicario (2015), Training Day (2001), and TV shows such as Breaking Bad… they’re all influenced by The French Connection.
It’s worth watching to see Friedkin’s, for the time, groundbreaking directorial flourishes.
The Production of The French Connection
The film was a smash hit. Off its small budget of $2.2 million it had a worldwide theatrical run of $75 million.
Its commercial and critical success led to eight Oscar nominations, with wins for Best Picture, Best Actor (Gene Hackman), and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The French Connection now has a reputation as one of the greatest films ever made. In 2005 it was put in America’s Nation Film Registry (in the US some films are set aside to ensure their preservation for posterity).
It was director Friedkin’s fifth film. He was dead against Gene Hackman for the lead role of Popeye. Various actors were considered for it, including Steve McQueen.
The director also thought of using non-actors, such as New York columnist Jimmy Breslin! He’d never acted in his life and turned down the offer as he didn’t want to get behind the wheel of a car for the chase scene.
After exhausting many other options, including James Caan, Charles Bronson, and Lee Marvin, he settled with Hackman.
Gene Hackman had starred in a bunch of films in the late ’60s as a supporting actor, getting an Oscar nod for Bonnie and Clyde (1967). But his Oscar win for French Connection put him on the Hollywood stardom map.
He didn’t seem to have any issues casting Roy Scheider, who he later worked with again on his 1977 project Sorcerer.
One of the standout moments of the film was its legendary car chase sequence.
This chase was filmed in Brooklyn over a stretch of 26 blocks across Gravesend and Bensonhurt neighbourhoods. Famously, Friedkin couldn’t get a police permit to record the chase. Some police officers held traffic back, with control of traffic lights across five blocks, but many of the action sequences were done without that proper permission.
This led to hasty shooting, with some car collisions in the scene not being planned. In true filmmaking fashion, Friedkin left them in anyway.
Although years later he did acknowledge he’d never do that again.
But he shot quite a lot of the film in a seedy, street level documentary style. This adds to the film’s sense of realism (again, it is based on a true story).
On a separate note, The French Connection was one of the first movies to include footage of the World Trade Center twin towers. Still under construction when the film launched in 1971, the Center eventually opened on April 4th 1973.
