The French Connection

New York City in the 1970’s: gritty, filled with crime and corruption, cops that step over the line, and drugs. This is the pre-Giuliani era city that Martin Scorsese set many of his early films in. The city itself is a major player, giving us audience members a glimpse into an era bygone and good riddance. This is a New York City riddled with drugs being smuggled in from France, the police running themselves ragged trying to bust the dealers and smugglers in a losing war against the criminal element. The story that makes up The French Connectioncomes from the non-fictional book by the same name about narcotics detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso who, in 1961, broke up an organized crime ring seizing a record amount of heroin.  The film could have easily been just another in a long line of police procedurals had it not been for three main factors: Williams Friedkin, Gene Hackman and a truly insane car chase. 

In Marseille a police detective is murdered while tailing Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), the head of a French heroin smuggling ring. Charnier plans to smuggle $32 million worth of the drug into America by hiding it in the car of his unsuspecting friend, television personality Henri Devereaux (Frédéric de Pasquale) who is traveling to New York City by ship. Meanwhile, NYC Detectives Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider), while out for drinks notice Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and his wife, Angie (Arlene Farber), entertaining mobsters involved in the narcotics business. The two detectives follow the couple and establish a link between Boca and a buyer in the narcotics underworld.  

They learn a shipment of heroin is coming in soon and convince their boss to allow a wire tap on Boca’s phones. Through a combination of the wire taps and basic surveillance, Popeye is able to connect Boca with Charnier but loses his tail on the latter when he is spotted. Now aware the police are on to them an assassination attempt is made on Popeye who survives and gives chase in a commandeered vehicle while the assassin tries to escape in an elevated train leading to a spectacular car chase through the streets of New York, endangering pedestrians and property all along the way. The car with the smuggled drugs is eventually found and the drugs discovered. An identical car is returned to Devereaux who turns it over to Charnier. The police follow the vehicle and set up road blocks to capture Charnier and a shoot-out occurs but Charnier escapes.

The film is based on a true story and in that story the main antagonist escaped, never having been caught by the American police. This is spelled out in end title cards. It is therefore unfortunate that a sequel to The French Connection was released a few years later that will ignore the facts as they are spelled out here and see Popeye Doyle finally catch up to Charnier, killing him. None of this happened in real life. The real life counterpart of Charnier was captured in France by the local authorities and served his prison sentence there. A second sequel, Popeye Doyle, was made for television starring Ed O’Neill in the title role. Neither of these come close to the original film.

Gene Hackman is spot on as the street-wise but odious detective Popeye Doyle. This was a role he originally didn’t want to play because of how bad of a person Doyle is. He is a racist cop who abuses his authority to bring in large numbers of minor offenders, mostly drug users with negligible amounts in possession. He is also the only three dimensional character in the film, including his partner Cloudy. This is not Roy Scheider’s fault; Roy would get an Oscar nomination for this film after all. He isn’t given much to work with, though, which makes it all the more impressive what he does with so little. At a certain point Cloudy kind of drops out of the picture for a while and it becomes a Popeye Doyle solo film temporarily. 

During this part of the film we get the famous chase scene between Popeye in a car and Nicoli, one of Charnier’s men. Nicoli hijacks an El Train and forces it to speed through its next stop, eventually crashing it. Popeye is in pursuit in a vehicle below, driving recklessly through pedestrians, traffic, crashing into other vehicles and generally endangering hundreds of people in his relentless pursuit of one man. This scene, more than any other, shows how little Popeye cares about anything other than catching his man. He is as dangerous on the streets as any of the people he is after. When he does finally catch up to Nicoli he shoots the unarmed man in the back. This moment was used in much of the film’s marketing back in 1971 and offended real law enforcement officers who rightfully called this action out as murder. 

The French Connection is shot in such a way as to emphasize the grittiness of the city and the realities of the inner cities of this era. There is trash all over the streets, crime rampant and even fires casually burning on the ground in alleyways. The police walk into a bar and bottles of pills magically appear all over the floor as the patrons offload them to avoid getting caught in possession. William Friedkin captures this moment in time well giving us a glimpse into a time not too far gone. New York City is still a dangerous place but it’s a far cry from what it used to be.

The ending of this film can feel like a let down with Charnier escaping arrest but that is true to what really happened. It gives the film a uniqueness and reality to the proceedings that a tacked on fictional ending would have undercut. Perhaps this is why the sequel is such a let down. By jettisoning the reality in favor of a fake victory it waters down the greatness this film has. It’s better to just ignore that sequel and let the story end here. This is how it was written and this is how Friedkin envisioned his movie. It’s a taught, gritty crime story with a very flawed lead character that doesn’t end on the note you’d think it would. It’s beautifully directed by a master filmmaker that knew how to show a city hurting from all the crime on the streets. The ending, such as it is, may seem anticlimactic but is actually the perfect ending for the story being told and didn’t need any extra chapter beyond to wrap things up. It’s the perfect representative of this bygone era with a fast moving plot that, while the pacing ebbs and flows, is one big chase right from the start.

Academy Award Nominations: 

Best Picture: Philip D’Antoni (won)

Best Director: Williams Friedkin (won)

Best Actor: Gene Hackman (won)

Best Supporting Actor: Roy Scheider

Best Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium: Ernest Tidyman (won)

Best Cinematography: Owen Roizman

Best Film Editing: Gerald B. Greenberg (won)

Best Sound: Christopher Newman and Theodore Soderberg

____________________________________________________

Release Date: October 7, 1971

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco and Marcel Bozzuffi

Directed By: Williams Friedkin