The French Connection 1975
Director William Friedkin
With his passing, the anonymity and mediocrity of Gene Hackman's character in The French Connection in a dirty, pulpous, frozen-concrete, neon-signed, car dominated America springs to mind. The annoying ambient background noises, the rumble of the traffic, the wind, hard to hear conversations and finally Hackman and Schneider as the human center pieces that lend narrative to the chaos. These very ‘unfilm star type’ actors, are prefect as 'nonentities with a mission' in the gigantic monster city scape.
Nothing here looks film-set controlled. Open spaces foreigners have never seen - rubbish strewn and unpeopled, are home-turf to the slightly silly Popeye Doyle, with his comical neurosis about "feet picking" and no concept of ‘upstanding’, going about roughing 'em up and half-frozen on a slice of pizza and horrid coffee. From across the street he can see the drug runners, (equally de-centred actors from European cinema) Fernando Rey and Pierre Nicoli, feasting on delicacies in a carpeted restaurant, which raises his desire to catch them to insane levels. No apologies are made for this hyperactive 'hero', a slob, a bit nasty, plugged in and energized by the city streets to fuel the magnificent chase scenes. While the bad guys are polite, 'middle-class' in twee attire and genuinely so very cruel, Popeye's ridiculous anti-conformist little hat is a great big finger to 'respectability'.
This cursory style of filming of New York City and its inhabitants lets us overhear incidental 'snippets' of a standard narrative plot from the midst of this bustle, boosted by theme music from the great jazz trumpeter Don Ellis, and the major performances as well as non-actor real people in a number of supporting roles and of course usually in the background. The homogeneity of it all, the communication between the various departments, the Director, technicians, wardrobe, sound, whatever, is wonderful.
The French Connection is a great example from a number of films at the time that owe their existence to 20th century street photographers like Winogrand, Gordon Parks, and Neil Libbert, Lawrence Shustak and others.
Gene Hackman in The French Connection
Still from The French Connection
Neil Libbert, 42 Street 1960
