The French Connection

The French Connection (1971) is less a crime film than a surveillance film. A narcotics detective called Popeye Doyle chases a heroin shipment coming from Marseille to New York, and most of the running time is spent waiting, watching and walking behind people. Doyle came from a real man, Eddie Egan, and his partner Sonny Grosso became Buddy Russo. Both appear in the film in small parts; Egan plays a supervising officer named Simonson. The man whose case this was gives orders to the actor playing him. Friedkin did not want Gene Hackman. Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason and Peter Boyle were all considered, the studio approved Rod Taylor, and Friedkin settled on Hackman reluctantly. Hackman won an Oscar for it and the film took five, including Best Picture and Best Director. The chase under the elevated train is what the film is remembered for. Cinematographer Owen Roizman undercranked to 18 frames per second to exaggerate the speed. Several collisions between stunt drivers happened for real during the shoot and stayed in the cut. In 2023 a scene containing a racial slur was quietly removed from digital platforms. Most critics read that as erasure rather than correction. It runs 104 minutes. Good for: seventies American crime cinema, practical chase work, and protagonists you are not meant to like. Less good for: Doyle is racist and brutal, and the film neither endorses nor excuses him. The plotting is deliberately slow and the ending refuses to satisfy.