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

Trump on Gaza, OMG

It may have come to your attention that recently President Trump of the USA met with PM Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, and the outcome was some statements to the press that seemed to surprise and shock many commentators. He said, in short, that Gaza should be run and owned by the US. He suggested Gaza had potentially some good real estate and it could be a nice place if so, a kind of new Riviera. But the Palestinian indigenous residents should leave and go to other countries, Egypt and Jordan were mentioned.

This mooted war crime of ethnic cleansing was softened a little by his apparent concern that Gaza was now a pile of rubble (no mention of the extensive bombing by Israel which caused this or the bombs being from the US, and no mention of the thousands killed, with many bodies still under this rubble) in which people unfortunately could not have a nice time and it needed to be flattened and building start afresh, which the US could do.

Later ‘interpretations’ of what Trump meant said his idea was temporary displacement of Palestinians. Most of Trump’s comments fulfilled Netanyahu’s every dream and he could not help smiling throughout the meeting, that is, except when Trump said the bit about the US and not Israel running Gaza. This must have irked him. Should he not be wondering whether the war was actually supported so enthusiastically by the US just to allow the US to fulfil certain imperialist ambitions in the Middle East?  Was Irael only being used as a tool in this respect? Who knows, but that little moment was perhaps revealing.

The problem that lies at the heart of all this conflict and strife is the founding of Israel not as such, but as an exclusively Jewish state in a land that had a mixed religious population. The reason for this was the US support for the project of the religious extremist Zionists to get a western orientated foothold in the Middle East near to the oil fields and the Suez Canal. This new state could function as a police and security presence for its interests in the region.

To have this work, and for its presence to be able to expand, it was necessary for there to be some friction inbuilt to the state that would cause continual strife, terror, and wars in which the US, which was after all a country a long way away, could interfere profitably. Fundamentalist Islamists obliged, countering one fascism with another from a different religion.

All these shenanigans were just continuing the old imperialism of the earlier European powers, but now the US was the main superpower.

Trump’s comments were therefore not really a surprise in their content and meaning, but only in that the aims were said so openly and brazenly, not shrouded and cushioned by pseudo humanist caring waffle as the earlier president Biden often did.

As the media digested and reported Trump’s remarks, they tried various framing tactics, and the one the liberal ‘progressive’ bourgeois press settled on was to report them in a matter-of-factual manner as if they were quite normal, like the Guardian:

“…Donald Trump’s controversial idea, which has sparked anger around the Middle East, comes as Israel and militant group Hamas are expected to begin talks on the second round of a fragile ceasefire plan to end almost 16 months of fighting in Gaza….” *

These remarks did not just spark anger in the Middle East, this is misinformation, they sparked condemnation around the world, and calling them merely controversial ideas was just trolling the Left on behalf of the leader of the free world, just as they and other members of the ‘free press’ had done while looking on at the genocidal bombing campaign in Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’s 7 October massacre of Israelis, an escapade by Hamas of adventurist terrorism that could not have been better designed to achieve this exact response. Who suffers? - Ordinary working class people on both sides, and also in the US, whose vast amounts of wealth which are being spent on weapons for foreign regimes are not being spent on them, they will have to deal with another rise in their cost of living.

*From <https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/06/middle-east-crisis-live-white-house-walks-back-trumps-gaza-takeover-comments-in-face-of-widespread-international-anger>