The French Connection at 50: one of the greatest New York movies ever

It is one of the best movies ever – in my book.

The street realism of The French Connection, perhaps the best film of Friedkin’s career, owes much to films like Gillo Pontocorvo’s The Battle of Algiers and Costa-Gavras’s Z, both fact-based political thrillers that used documentary realism to assert their own authenticity. (Friedkin had said he was particularly influenced by the latter.) That’s obviously a deceptive gambit, since none of these films are actual documentaries and deviate from history at their pleasure. But The French Connection, now 50 years old, remains one of the great New York films because it feels so much like a seedy backlot tour through a city that no longer exists.

Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle – brilliantly played by Gene Hackman in his breakthrough role, also feels like a character who no longer exists, at least not as the type of morally ambiguous screen hero the audience might be asked to support. Popeye is a hugely flawed detective, notorious for pursuing hunches that fail to pay off, cutting procedural corners when necessary to make a case, and, in the end, making decisions in the field that are risky at best and consequentially awful at worst. He also has racial blind spots that put him in line with characters like Nick Nolte in 48 Hrs., though the film is less conscious about pointing them out. This is who Popeye Doyle is, Friedkin suggests, and it’s up to the audience to decide how much of a hero they judge him to be.

If you haven’t seen this movie, see it. If you have seen it, see it again.

Source: TheGuardian