The French Connection (1971): Eitan's Take

It could be argued that The French Connection is the purest genre film to ever win Best Picture. From the first frame to the last, this is a film that never pretends to be anything but a smart, propulsive thriller about the dark alleys and gangland hideouts of New York City. Its characters barely have time to speak; they're mostly running, shooting, plotting, catching glances, leaning around corners. You get the drift. The film's major flaw is perhaps its biggest asset as a straightforward thriller: we never really get to know anyone in the film. The film's protagonist, Popeye Doyle, and its villain, Alain Chenier, are just tokens -- two unstoppable forces set into motion. Chenier's primary goal is to be swarthy and evil and to groom his lush salt and pepper beard while cackling over heroin deals. Doyle's primary goal is to run, yell, and shoot until he has his man. We never learn what motivates these men (and the various cops-and-robbers archetypes that surround them). We only see what they DO. Arguably, this is enough.

After Patton, which is a largely cerebral exercise, The French Connection is a huge relief. It's a big, loud, kinetic, bloody pulp film with porkpie hats, big guns, the best (and best-edited) car chase in the history of cinema, and a host of absolutely iconic shots featuring various police officers snooping through the gritty streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn, hot in pursuit of deliciously evil French goons who somehow discover a way out every time. That was a run-on sentence, but this is really a run-on movie; it's constantly in a state of dizzy climax, moving from setpiece to setpiece with that zippy, intoxicating "New Hollywood" feel. Hackman and Scheider deliver pitch-perfect performances; even though I don't think their characters are that deep per se, there's a lot in Cloudy and Popeye that you can sink your teeth into. There's no showy compassion, there's no silly moments of introspection, there's no feigned complexity. These are guys who do their job well and live by the skin of their teeth, and Hackman and Scheider capture the grit and professionalism of these two characters perfectly. The only misstep, perhaps, is the gratuitous post-coital scene in Popeye's apartment. Sure, it's funny that he picked up the biker girl, and it's even funnier that she cuffed him to the bed with his own cuffs, but a scene so removed from the plot should tell us something about who these guys are. Instead, it's a five minute piffle in the middle of a taut, suspenseful police procedural.

And about that car chase, because no discussion of The French Connection is complete without a discussion of those fifteen glorious minutes. A lot of films since 1971 have attempted to recapture the magic of Friedkin's most audacious setpiece. Speed, The Matrix Reloaded, The Italian Job, Ronin, Terminator 3, Crank, every post-Moore Bond film, you name it. This particular car chase is incredible because it feels real and terrifying, and it's absolutely integral to the plot. There's no goofy-ass fruit carts or plate glass windows here; it's basically hand-to-hand combat, but the fighters are a busted coupe and a speeding subway. The tension and excitement of the scene doesn't come from shit blowing up -- it comes from Doyle's raw desperation and heroism.

This is far from a perfect film, and it feels quite dated. But it's hard to deny that the Academy made a VERY non-traditional pick here -- even moreso than with Midnight Cowboy, which was basically a romance film -- and they picked a truly exciting genre film at that. A solid 8/10.