Review of The French Connection by Iona Singh

The French Connection 1975 

Director William Friedkin

Gene Hackman has just left us and I couldn't help but have another look at his character frantically dashing around the sooty, trafficky streets of New York in The French Connection. Those annoying background noises and conversations that are hard to hear against the rumbling traffic and whirling wind, create a sort of anarchy of the senses that relies on the human centre pieces of Hackman and his sidekick Roy Schneider to bring a little narrative to the chaos. The two very unfilm-star type actors only just stand out from the city scape and very little looks like a  film-set here, offering us a glimpse of abandonned rubbish strewn spaces that foreigners rarely see. All just home to Popeye Doyle with his silly small hat, and with no one around to play the 'good cop' to he can unleash his dubious but comical "feet picking in Poughkeepsie" police tactics, unconcerned with what side of the racism line he appears to be on. 

Later, the 'french' bad guys, played by Fernando Rey and Marcel Bozzuffi (equally de-centred actors from European cinema) calm, twee and quite middle-class, feast in a posh restaurant, watched over by the two freezing policeman from across the street, cold pizza and terrible coffee in hand, catapulting our slob-hero's desire to catch them to insane levels later encapsulated in the frenetic elevated rail sequence, which must be one of the best car chases ever filmed. 

The 'cursory' style of filming New York City and its inhabitants, is boosted by theme music by the great jazz trumpeter Don Ellis, along with the fact that we only just overhear incidental 'snippets' of standard plot amidst the bustle, and the use of non-actors in supporting roles. Elements that make the movie formally a little bit radical and the homogeneity of all of that, the communication between the various departments, especially sound and wardrobe is wonderful. It holds up well in time. Maybe it is one of the best films.

Visually and aesthetically, looking at its influences, The French Connection is an example from a number of films that owe their existence to the 'incidental' work of groundbreaking 20th century street photographers like Gary Winogrand, Gordon Parks, Neil Libbert and Lawrence Shustak.

Gene Hackman in The French Connection

Still from The French Connection

Neil Libbert, 42 Street 1960

 Garry Winogrand, Utah (Wyoming), 1964

Lawrence Shustak, Street photographer

Gordon Park. A Harlem Family 1967