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| NYPD detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) catches the case of his life. |
Release Date: Oct. 7, 1971. Running Time: 104 minutes. Screenplay: Ernest Tidyman. Based on the book by: Robin Moore. Producer: Philip D'Antoni. Director: William Friedkin.
THE PLOT:
NYPD narcotics detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) takes his partner, Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) out for drinks. It's meant to be a bit of after-work relaxation... until Doyle notices small-time criminal Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) making a show of being a big spender for a group of mobsters. On a hunch, the two detectives spend a week following Sal. When they link him to Joel Weinstock (Harold Gary), a laywer known for bankrolling drug buys, they go to their captain (Eddie Egan) to open an official investigation.
A wiretap eventually turns up a meeting between Sal and a Frenchman, Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). It's clear enough that Charnier is bringing drugs into New York, and that Sal is facilitating the deal. But as their surveillance drags on, their captain's support starts to falter - just as Charnier begins to worry that Doyle represents a threat to his plans...
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| An angry Doyle argues with his colleagues, as his partner (Roy Scheider) looks on. |
CHARACTERS:
Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle: The French Connection doesn't do much direct characterization, preferring to let the audience observe the characters' behavior. Several mentions are made of a past incident in which one of Doyle's hunches ended with the death of another officer. We never learn exactly what happened, leaving us to draw our own conclusions - though it's clear that FBI agent Mulderig (Bill Hickman) blames Doyle. The detective stumbles across the case by chance, sensing something "off" about Sal and insisting on tailing him. He then refuses to let go, clinging to the pursuit like a junkyard dog who's found a meaty bone. Things take on a personal dimension after he tails Charnier. The Frenchman shakes him off at the subway, smirking and waving as his train leaves the angry policeman behind. A humiliated Doyle neither forgives nor forgets, as shown by him reciprocating that gesture at the movie's end.
Charnier: He's Doyle's opposite. The detective is "a mess," by his own partner's description, living in a dingy apartment, wearing frayed and off-rack clothes, and indulging in one-night stands. Charnier carries himself with dignity and confidence. He lives in a mansion in Marseilles and seems happily married to a much younger woman (Ann Rebbot). Doyle has a hair trigger temper, while Charnier is eternally calm. Fernando Rey lends the presence of a classic European aristocrat to the role. His poise is so perfect that it's telling when even small cracks emerge near the end.
Russo: Doyle's partner, whose job includes the unofficial duty of keeping him in check. When the two run down a suspect early in the movie, Russo is happy to deliver a few kicks - but he also stops his partner from going further. He holds back Doyle repeatedly during verbal spats with Agent Mulderig, inserting himself between the two to keep their disputes verbal instead of physical. He also disapproves of his partner's casual racism. When Doyle says of a recent arrest, "Never trust a (racial slur)," Russo replies that the man could just as easily have been white - prompting Doyle's more accurate, "Never trust anyone." For all that he clearly recognizes Doyle's faults, he remains unwavering in his support. Doyle finally snaps that, first through a reckless action and then - more critically - by showing that he doesn't care about what he just did. Actor Roy Scheider's shocked reaction is superbly played, as we see Russo's faith in Doyle drain away in an instant.
Sal Boca: A small-time criminal who is trying to push his way up the ladder by facilitating the deal with Charnier. He tries to present himself as unflappable, but the police presence makes him anxious, as does moneyman Joel Weinstock's caution. Both Weinstock and Charnier size him up accurately. Weinstock remarks on his inexperience and observes that he needs to move more cautiously, while Charnier quips that Sal "sees police in his soup." Tony Lo Bianco, in probably his most notable role, manages to capture both the surface slickness and the thinly veiled nervousness.
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| Sal (Tony Lo Bianco) welcomes Charnier (Fernando Rey). It's shown from a distance, as if to make the audience part of the police surveillance. |
THOUGHTS:
The French Connection, along with Bullitt and the original Dirty Harry, effectively invented the "cop antihero" of 1970s and '80s police thrillers. It would be harder to find a '70s or '80s cop film (or series) that didn't borrow from it. That lends it a familiarity, both in content and presentation style, that should blunt the effectiveness of modern viewings.
I still find it spellbinding.
Director William Friedkin made his name as a documentary filmmaker, and he uses those techniques here. There are several scenes that play like they came from a documentary, with camera shots that play as if a documentarian was grabbing shots on the fly and moving the camera to keep up with his subjects. Wide shots, simple pans, and zooms are favored. A scene at an automobile graveyard starts with a close shot on several abandoned cars, then zooms out. The camera pans to follow Charnier, his wife, and another associate as they walk to the auction. The auction itself is covered from just a couple of fixed angles inside a cramped space.
The movie features many scenes of police following suspects. The camera tends to start on one officer following the target, then panning or zooming to pick up a second officer as the first turns off or away to avoid detection. That second officer will be followed to a third, or a wider shot will show both officers to demonstrate their physical proximity to both each other and the target. When Charnier is observed having dinner in a restaurant, he's viewed from outside the window. We see him talking, but we do not hear the conversation.
The movie isn't afraid to take its time, and a surprising amount of it is made up of sequences of surveillance work. This creates an impression of the grind of such work, with long periods of tedium followed by bursts of panic when the target is suddenly not in anyone's view. For much of the movie, Doyle's hunch of a big deal is actively questioned by his colleagues. There's enough evidence for his captain to call in the FBI and support extended surveillance, but there's a limit to how long he'll let it consume the department's limited resources.
The pace picks up in the second half, starting with the scene in which Charnier spots and shakes Doyle at the subway station. From that point, plot developments come faster, with a greater sense of urgency. This is particularly apparent in the movie's most famous sequence...
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| Doyle collides with another car during the movie's famous chase scene. |
THE CHASE SCENE:
The French Connection is often cited as having one of the best car chases ever put to film. It's a fine action set piece, and it honestly makes for an excellent short film in its own right.
The meat of the sequence sees Doyle pursuing a would-be assassin who is escaping on an elevated subway express. Doyle follows in a car, frantically driving beneath the train. A handheld camera inside Doyle's car catches his reactions, while other handheld shots follow the car as he drives recklessly to keep pace with his quarry.
This is intercut with the criminal inside the train car, with shots that are also handheld, though initially with less haphazardness than the Doyle shots. As the tension rises, the camera inside the train becomes less steady, matching the frenetic style of the Doyle moments, and the shot lengths shorten to match the quick cutting of Doyle's car as it pursues below.
The cinematic language retains the documentary feel. Both the shots inside Doyle's car and the shots int the train could be taken by a passenger. Most shots outside the car are presented as if filmed by a third party a safe distance away, with momentum created more by the rapid editing than by the visuals themselves. It's masterfully done, and I suspect Gerald B. Greenberg's Oscar for Film Editing had a lot to do with this scene in particular.
I have two criticisms of the chase scene, or rather its impact on the plot. First is that it doesn't actually have much narrative impact. There's an attempt to make it relevant, with Doyle's captain taking him off the case just before the chase, with the confrontation resulting in him staying on... but it's blatantly obvious that this minor and brief complication is there only to justify the set piece. If you were to remove the chase and the bit with Doyle's captain from right before it, the only sign that anything is missing would be the disappearance of one minor supporting character.
My second criticism is that, realistically, this incident should have ended Charnier's deal. Weinstock was already shown to be wary... and then a French associate of Charnier's attempts to kill a police officer before making the kind of scene on a public subway that would ignite a media firestorm. Rather than buying his drugs, I would think Weinstock and his associates would decide that this sort of violent amateurishness is dangerous and insist the Frenchman leave the city and never return.
But this is outweighed by the scene's cinematic function, which it achieves brilliantly. The set piece gives the audience a jolt, essentially waking them up for the final Act. Doyle is put in direct danger for the first time in the story, which adds to his personal stake. We see how he responds to danger: He reacts quickly, with sharp instincts as he anticipates the train's next stop; however, he's reckless and entirely willing to put civilians in danger. Notably, this is one of the few times he is not accompanied by Russo. The end of the set piece foreshadows the way Doyle will act at the end of the movie - setting it up for the viewer, while at the same time preserving the shock for Russo.
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| Charnier waves mockingly at Doyle. He'll come to regret that. |
SPIRITUAL SUCCESSORS AND A SEQUEL:
1973's The Seven-Ups was directed by French Connection producer Philip D'Antoni, and starred French Connection cast members Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco, and Bill Hickman. Scheider's Buddy Manucci is - like Buddy Russo - based on Sonny Grosso, and he's pretty definitely the same character. It's no French Connection, but it's entertaining, with a clever story and a nicely suspenseful car chase.
The same cannot be said of Badge 373, with Robert Duvall as an Eddie Egan-inspired detective (basically "Popeye" Doyle). I didn't manage to finish the movie, but what I saw was quite bad, both tedious and filled with the types of melodramatic clichés that The French Connection avoided.
There was one direct sequel, director John Frankenheimer's French Connection II. Unimaginative title aside, it's a surprisingly decent thriller that takes Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle out of his New York City comfort zone, planting him in Marseilles. This creates a different feel than the original, and the film boasts a very effective sequence in which a character becomes addicted to heroin. Most of the rest is pretty standard, and Doyle is "safer" - and therefore less interesting - than in the original. Hackman's still good, though, and the ending chase is memorable. It's not in the same league as its predecessor, but it's worth watching, which is more than I expected.
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| Doyle and Russo follow a suspect. |
OVERALL:
The French Connection helped to create the template for the cop thriller subgenre as we know it. Elements of it have been borrowed, expanded on, copied, and even parodied, with the car dismantling scene memorably sent up by an episode of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker's short-lived Police Squad!
Despite its individual elements now being familiar, the movie holds up. Its documentary style, real locations, and naturalistic performances combine with a screenplay that demonstrates its characters through behavior rather than directly telling us who the characters are. It's not quite William Friedkin's best film, because I think The Exorcist is even better, but it remains a sharp, absorbing crime drama that earned its awards and also its place in film history.
Rating: 9/10.
Best Picture - 1970: Patton
Best Picture - 1972: The Godfather
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