The action of The French Connection
How the classic 1971 film differs from today's films
Film director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) died last week. His interviews were circulating online, so I ended up watching a few. He is quite a character—extremely cantankerous, I think that’s the best word. All these stories about how difficult making movies was for him just pour out of him—and a lot of bitterness too, but a bitterness that seems very grounded and earned. He is not at all the kind of above it all creative genius one might imagine in thinking of a man who directed two of the best films of all time. But this is what makes him interesting, I think—film is a materialist, grounded medium.
Film is moving pictures—you should feel the pictures moving on screen. It’s about making the audience feel things through moving images. You should feel the hard edges of the picture as you careen through its world—it bounces along, through its world, and you bounce along with it. Afterwards, you feel like you have been transported into another world. The film theorist Siegfried Kracauer said: “Guided by film…we approach, if at all, ideas no longer on highways leading through the void but on paths that wind through the thicket of things.”
The French Connection (1971) does this in its famous car chase scene—you can feel the world of 1970s New York so viscerally, and you can feel the struggle of Gene Hackman’s character, detective Popeye Doyle. The filmmaking style brings you into the thicket of things—you can feel Hackman careening, jostling, bruising around the streets of New York City. You aren’t on smooth highways—you’re along with him as he pursues his suspect into the subway station, chugging on foot up these maddeningly long, steep stairs:
But his suspect is quicker and just out of his grasp. So Hackman, a large man who is not a natural runner, has to chug back down the stairs and commandeer a car from someone on the street, while his suspect is getting away in a subway car.
It seems hard for Gene Hackman to get through the world—in general and in this chase scene. Everything is very hard for him, and deeply earned. That’s what makes this chase scene so classic and famous. My favorite part is when you see him chugging through the subway turnstile—he made it up the stairs, but the last little bit, of jumping over the turnstile and getting onto the train, is what slowed him down. That little insignificant shot is filmed so naturalistically—all in one take, somehow the camera follows him in the little twists and turns of navigating the station, right up close like you’re there with him. It’s a small thing but it did a lot to bring me into the scene.
Then he gets a car from someone and chases the train car from the street. The subway is overhead, so he can see it above him, snaking along the street.
He has his eyes on the train overhead, and not so much on the road he’s driving on. He is blindly racing along the street—chasing the train, which isn’t even on the street. This gives the sequence such a unique, strange feel—chasing something that isn’t even there. It’s this very abstract thing, but depicted in such a material, concrete way. Since he’s racing blindly, he gets into multiple accidents. At least one of the crashes in this sequence is real and not a stunt, and you can feel it. There have been more spectacular, intricate, and lengthy car chases in movies—this one is only like five or six minutes. It won’t measure up to anything in the Fast and Furious movies. But that’s the difference—this car chase feels real, and like it was stitched together quick and on a small budget (which it was).
Hackman was the perfect star for this chase, because he isn’t a natural action star. He isn’t especially athletic, so you can feel the grind and the toll it takes on him. (Friedkin intentionally pushed his buttons and tried to piss him off, so more of his angst and world-weariness would come through in his performance). You can feel how pissed off and exhausted he is—during the whole movie really, but especially during the chase scene. Compare this to someone like the Rock—everything is so easy for him. You never feel like he is exerting himself, or like anything he’s doing is difficult. It’s all just one big fun exercise for him, and he always wins.
The French Connection isn’t one of my favorite movies ever, and I don’t think it’s perfect. Friedkin admitted that he didn’t finish reading the book that the movie was based on, because he couldn’t follow all the ins and outs of the complex story, and he thought it was kind of boring. That comes across a bit in the film, in my eyes—it kind of meanders and the narrative is hard to follow. But the story isn’t what matters—what matters is the world that is depicted, and the authentic, challenging way that the star moves through the world. That’s what you don’t see anymore.
The ending too is unusual—it’s ambiguous. We don’t know what happens. You just hear Hackman shooting his gun…it’s not clear at who. The main drug kingpin, Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), gets away. Friedkin has said that the ending is supposed to be ambiguous—that maybe Hackman is just shooting his gun off at nothing, out of anger. He did all that work, and he didn’t get what he was chasing. That’s life. A good film brings you into life in a materialist, realistic way. We rarely see that now.