THE FRENCH CONNECTION
US, 1971, 104 minutes, Colour.
Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider.
Directed by William Friedkin.
The French Connection walked away with a number of Oscars for 1971, including Best Film, Director, Writer (Ernest Tidyman) and Actor (Hackman). Roy Scheider had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The awards probably over-rate it. (This was the year of A Clockwork Orange, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Straw Dogs and Klute). Many audiences, somehow or other, expected more from it. However, on the level of interesting police action it is a very well made film - the exposure of an international drug-ring, the workings of the New York police, the picture of New York and the Bullitt-comparison car and train chase. There is much to commend in the film and, of course, much to discuss.
Many query the presentation of Popeye Doyle and his fanatic attempts to catch his prey - the obsessed policeman whose methods seem to differ so little from the criminals, and who is offered for our sympathy. Is this a dangerous right-wing attitude? Yet drug-traffickers are the worst of exploiters. The questions are certainly raised. (A contemporary comparison was Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry).
There is much to discuss in this sometimes ugly mirror of today's problems.
1. Why did this film receive the Oscar for the Best Film of 1971? Did it deserve it?
2. Was this a good thriller? What were the best elements in it? Where was it less successful? Why.
3. How was the international setting built up at the opening with the cross-cutting from France to America?
4. How contemporary was the plot - the drug scene and its implications?
5. The picture of the New York police and detection - how interesting, realistic, e.g. the stripping and weighing of the car?
6. Popeye Doyle and the film's focussing on him. What kind of man was he -admirable, dedicated, zealous, duty-bound, responsible, brutal, coarse, fanatical? Did the film present him as admirable?
7. The character of Popeye Doyle raises the question of how evil wickedness and crime are (like this big international drug racket and the making of money out of the sufferings of people), and what attitudes should be taken towards them and how drastic action should be against them. How violent and hard-hitting should the police be, how much power do they need to protect the public? What effect does such power have on the policemen themselves? At times Doyle seemed indistinguishable from the criminals in the stances he took. Is he "a great old-style lawman hampered by prosaic officials" or a "sadistic, right-wing fanatic"?
8. What kind of man was Buddy Russo - why his devotion to Doyle?
9. The chase sequence - what impact? Doyle's responsibility to people on the road versus his need to catch the criminals?
10. The people involved in the drug ring. Charnier, the T.V. personality, Pierre Nicoli, the Bocas. What kind of people? What justice did they deserve?
11. The details of the work - shootings, interrogations, tailing etc., Doyle as Santa Claus, the underworld organisation, final shoot-out and escape?
12. The ending, the escape - Doyle's and Russo's transfer, was it merited? The value of a film like this?
