winter throwback: The french connection

 A guest review by Joe Frankel, who takes a look at the 1971 Best Picture winner. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Gene Hackman won the Oscar for Best Actor. That same year, Jane Fonda won Best Actress for Klute, which I'm currently reviewing for the Criterion section. Pop is all about synergy) 

It is one of just a handful of genre thrillers to receive Oscars in the top categories and it hasn’t really lost its power despite being a product of its time.  First-time viewers numbed by the glut of modern police procedurals may feel it doesn’t measure up, but this would be missing the point.  Even when it first came out it didn’t seek to dazzle you with the mechanics of an airtight plot or a glimpse behind the curtain at the intricacies of modern detective work.  The movie is far more concerned with capturing an authentic feeling for the seedy streets of 70s New York with a visceral, docu-style aesthetic and an expansiveness in the action scenes that feels bigger and more immersive than more standard TV cop show fare (of the modern or vintage variety).  It therefore shines as a particularly vivid time capsule. It’s directed with urgency and restless, herky-jerky energy by William Friedkin. The script by Ernest Tidyman is memorably terse and spare. There is very little dialogue and much of the movie revolves around stakeouts and chases.  The cast (including Gene Hackman as officer Popeye Doyle, Roy Scheider as his partner Buddy Russo and Fernando Ray as the French drug smuggler they wish to bring down) performs their roles in a notably minimalistic manner that feels more at home today than it would have back in the 70s when acting was still synonymous with theatricality.  The movie crackles with a nerve-jangling tension that the leads help to generate. There’s very little text, but you feel how much is on the line for Popeye and it’s touching how Buddy repeatedly attempts to clean up Popeye’s mess.  Friedkin doesn’t pause for character development or conventional story beats, but the movie still feels layered.  He directs the camera as if it’s undercover — searching for and finding the action.  It feels 100% authentic. It makes you believe you’re eavesdropping on real cops and looking over their shoulders as they chase half-baked hunches and questionable leads around New York and beyond.  

Politically it’s unclear whether the movie has sympathy for the black characters who Popeye busts. His taunting tagline, “do you pick your feet in Poughkipsie?” reveals his sadistic pleasure in taking down the (ultimately inconsequential) street pushers that make up his daily beat.  Did audiences used to laugh without any deeper consideration of the larger racial implications?  Popeye’s proud-boy posturing is disturbing – – particularly from a modern standpoint. It also gives the movie an air of truth. Very little has actually changed in 50 years.  Popeye has a friendship with one black informant (charismatically played by Al Fann) but he appears to delight in roughing him up after getting the information he needs from him.  (He implies the beat-down is required to cover up their friendship).  The picture witnesses the casual violence that Popeye enacts on these racialized characters.  He is equally determined to bust Sal Boca, the Italian high-roller who he spots across a bar and decides must be dirty based entirely on dubious profiling that proves (in this case) to be right.  Boca leads Popeye to a high level drug smuggler (Ray) and his “french connection” who become the central (white) adversary to Popeye and his partners in the movie.  Popeye makes a lot of questionable moves on the street, but we believe it’s all he really lives for and we can’t help but be riveted.  He’s such a loose canon we want to see what he’ll do next. Even when it’s uncomfortable to follow along with him we can’t look away.