The French Connection: Movie Classic of the Baby Boomer Era

The French Connection is director William Friedkin’s fictionalized re-telling of the biggest drug bust of the early 1960s. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Robin Moore, this classic movie turned the ‘good guys’ into amoral anti-heroes so frequently found in American New Wave films.

Much like the bandits of Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, New York City narcotics detectives James “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider) are portrayed as anti-authoritarian protagonists who behave like criminals to achieve their goals. That their mission is to end drug trade in the U.S. only makes their methods more disturbing – and at the same time, fascinating.

Friedkin was a big fan of European neo-realist films, in particular, Costa-Gavras’s Z and Clouzot’s Wages of Fear. He adopted a semi-documentary style for his graphic cop story, roaming the gritty winter streets of early 1970s New York with a handheld Arriflex camera. Following his narrow-minded, obsessive detectives as they play a hunch about a vague connection between a small-time hood and French heroin smugglers, Friedkin speeds his movie along at a breakneck pace, leaving the audience breathless, slightly dazed and totally exhilarated.

Constrained by a tight budget, Friedkin passed over Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason to cast Hackman, famous for his role as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. Scheider joined him as his dedicated but more rational partner. Together they played fictionalized versions of real-life narcotics officers Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, the lead characters of the book, who acted as advisors and played bit parts in the film.

Because of the headlong pace, the complex plot gets buried in the action. The movie is basically a cat-and-mouse game between the detectives and their quarry, a well-connected Frenchman named Alain Charnier (famed Spanish actor Fernando Rey), his American mob associates and his hitman, Pierre Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi, a French actor known for his tough guy persona). Much of the film deals with the nuts-and-bolts of narcotics trafficking and interdiction as Doyle and Russo track the movements of small-time hood Sal Boca (Tony LoBianco) and his wife, who they see entertaining mobsters at a nightclub. Through tedious shakedowns, stakeouts and wiretaps, the detectives become aware of the Frenchman, his American financier and a huge cache of extremely pure Turkish heroin on its way to New York.

The plot moves into high gear when the hitman Nicoli attempts to assassinate Doyle with a sniper rifle. He misses and evades the pursuing Doyle by boarding an elevated train. Doyle gives chase in a car appropriated from a bystander, speeding through the streets of Brooklyn below the train in one of the most famous and inspired car chases of all time. Nicoli forces the train to bypass stations to avoid capture and Doyle barely keeps up, nearly crashing the car several times, driving against traffic and narrowly missing a woman pushing a baby carriage. A safety mechanism halts the train before it rear-ends another train and Nicoli is forced to flee on foot. Doyle corners the hitman and shoots him as he turns to escape.

What sets The French Connection apart from its contemporaries (with the possible exceptions of The Wild Bunch and Midnight Cowboy) is how the movie embodies its themes. It’s not a prettified Hollywood studio movie; it looks like what it’s about. The authentic locations and atmospheric settings create an updated film noir, not a dreamed-up fiction but a drama based on actual people in actual places playing out actual events. Its unique style, copied by almost every cop movie from that point forward, counters long periods without dialogue with frenetic scenes driven by rapid intercutting, and seemingly interminable stretches of tedium with bursts of sanctioned brutality.

What you won’t find in this movie or others of its ilk, such as Serpico, French Connection 2 and (later) Prince of the City and (more recently) American Gangster, is a discussion of why illegal drugs are so popular in the U.S. in the first place. Ending drug traffic, and the corruption that necessarily follows it, are indeed important issues, but an investigation of the desire for a quick buck and a quick fix would seem to be paramount. Instead, viewers are given a violent, expensive thrill ride that’s a symptom of the underlying problem.

In addition to the aforementioned car vs. elevated train chase, The French Connection includes a number of notable scenes and unforgettable quotes. In particular are the paired scenes of Charnier waving goodbye to Doyle as he out-foxes the detective on the subway platform and the final scenario as Doyle waves hello to Charnier as he springs his trap to capture the dope-dealing Frenchman. A taste of mind-numbing police work is given in the stakeout scenes as the perpetrators dine on fine cuisine in fancy restaurants while the cops sit in their car eating take-out fare.

Another example of this crime-solving mindset is the dismantling of an unwitting French actor’s imported car that contains the coveted narcotic concealed in the rocker panels – and then putting the car back together again as part of the plot to capture Charnier. One of the most amusing scenes is Doyle’s interrogation of a street dealer with a long string of non sequiturs (“When's the last time you picked your feet, Willy? Who's your connection, Willy? What’s his name? I've got a man in Poughkeepsie who wants to talk to you. You ever been to Poughkeepsie?”) that so befuddles the suspect, he begins revealing his source.

An extremely popular film, The French Connection was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won five; Best Picture, Best Director (Friedkin), Best Actor (Hackman), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Tidyman) and Best Film Editing (Jerry Greenberg). It became the first R rated movie to win the Best Picture Oscar. (In 1969, Midnight Cowboy was the first X rated movie to win Best Picture; it has since been re-rated to R.)

Connection made an impressive $51 million in first release and remains popular primarily on the strength of the chase scene. The film announced the arrival of Friedkin as a director of well-made thrillers and added to the reputations of Hackman and Scheider as character actors who could carry a movie. Connection is ranked no. 93 on AFI’s 2007 Best Movies List and was selected for the National Film Registry in 2005.

What may be the most important influence of The French Connection is its status as the first of the action blockbusters that would later come to dominate Hollywood studio movies. Friedkin abetted this trend with his next film, The Exorcist, which joined The Godfather in the blockbuster sweepstakes the following year. The studios had finally figured out how to win back their audience and make a fortune in the process.

The French Connection movie originally clocked in at 104 minutes and, as noted above, received an R rating, for violence, strong language and nudity. The film is available on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray. (Unfortunately, the movie forums are rife with complaints about the dingy color of the Blu-Ray edition, reportedly caused by the meddling of Friedkin during the transfer process.)

Recent editions include commentary by Friedkin, Hackman and Scheider, deleted scenes and three ‘making of’ documentaries. The film is also included in sets with its under-rated sequel, The French Connection II, directed by the legendary John Frankenheimer and again starring Hackman as Popeye Doyle. Be sure to read the product description carefully to get the special features you want at the best price.

* Almost all of the characters in the film had real life counterparts based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Robin Moore.

* The famous car chase included several real crashes as a result of stunts going awry. Hackman did much of his own driving during the chase. Friedkin avoided getting the normal filming permits because he had off-duty police officers on the set, including Egan and Grosso.

* Two of the subway cars that appeared in the film are on display at the New York Transit Museum.