Continuing my viewing notes for the FEAST Film Nights evenings, these were my musings on The French Connection:
Towards the end of the 1960s major Hollywood studios started
worrying that they might be out of touch with younger viewing audiences, and
began hiring ‘risky’ directors like Arthur Penn (The Chase (1966), Bonnie and
Clyde (1967)), Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch (1969)) and Dennis Hopper (Easy
Rider (1969)) to breathe new life into depictions of America at the cinema. But
despite the advances made by these movies, the concept of The French Connection
– where drugs are rife in the city and New York cops are almost
indistinguishable from the bad guys - was deemed too amoral, and was turned
down by nearly every major studio before finally getting the green light from
20th Century Fox.
The French Connection is an adaptation of Robin Moore’s 1969
book of the same name, which told the true story of NYPD detectives Eddie Egan
and Sonny Grosso, who broke up a notorious New York drug operation and
confiscated thirty-two million pounds worth of heroin. Egan and Grosso served
as technical advisors on the movie, incorporating their own phrasing into
Ernest Tidyman’s script - their film counterparts Gene Hackman (who was not
the director’s first choice – Friedkin originally wanted Jackie Gleason) and
Roy Scheider spent a month patrolling with Egan so they could get closer to
the characters they were portraying. It’s probably best known for having one of
the tensest car chases in the history of film, but The French Connection is so
much more than that – both an intense character study and essay on the price of
corruption.
In a 2015 interview with the film’s director, William
Friedkin, he reflected on the making of the film: “We were mostly influenced by
the European films of the 1960s. The French new wave; Italian neo-realism;
Kurosawa and other Japanese filmmakers. We were inspired by them and not bound
to any formula. The French Connection, for all its success, was a real
departure for a cop film, which was why it took us two years to get it made.”
“The chase scene was never in (the) script. I created
that…with the producer Philip D’Antoni…we walked out of my apartment, headed south in Manhattan and we kept walking until we came up with that chase scene,
letting the atmosphere of the city guide us. The steam coming off the street,
and sound of the subway rumbling beneath our feet - the treacherous traffic on
crowded streets. Nobody ever asked to see a script. We went three hundred
thousand over (the) million and a half dollar budget, and they (the studio)
wanted to kill me every day for that.”
Friedkin hasn’t always been the most reliable of documenters
of his own films, and probably the greatest thing about The French Connection
is that, while he makes it sound like it was made up as he went along, it’s
actually a meticulously plotted movie without a wasted shot, which played its
own part in changing the future of film.
I agree, it's a fantastic film, and certainly a huge influence on the wave of Italian poliziottesco films that followed in its wake. Seeing the film today, it still feels raw - that scene where Doyle and Russo shakedown the black bar is so casual in its racism, it's jolting even by contemporary cop show standards. I like the sequel very much too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Wes - agreed re II. Friedkin's output between 1968 - 1978 was consistently challenging and satisfying. Sadly he went off the boil afterwards, but what a decade!
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