The French Connection (film) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids The French Connection
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	William Friedkin
Produced by	Philip D'Antoni
Screenplay by	Ernest Tidyman
Starring	Gene Hackman Fernando Rey Roy Scheider Tony Lo Bianco Marcel Bozzuffi
Music by	Don Ellis
Cinematography	Owen Roizman
Editing by	Gerald B. Greenberg
Studio	Philip D'Antoni Productions Schine-Moore Productions
Distributed by	20th Century-Fox
Release date(s)	October 7, 1971 (1971-10-07) (United States)
Running time	104 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English French
Budget	$1.8–2.2 million
Money made	$75 million (worldwide theatrical rental)

The French Connection is a 1971 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by William Friedkin and starring Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider and Fernando Rey. The screenplay, written by Ernest Tidyman, is based on Robin Moore's 1969 non-fiction book of the same name. It tells the story of fictional NYPD detectives Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo, whose real-life counterparts were detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, in pursuit of wealthy French smuggler Alain Charnier (played by Rey).

At the 44th Academy Awards, the film earned eight nominations and won five for Best Picture, Best Actor (Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Scheider), Best Cinematography and Best Sound Mixing. Tidyman also received a Golden Globe Award nomination, a Writers Guild of America Award and an Edgar Award for his screenplay. A sequel, French Connection II, followed in 1975 with Hackman and Rey reprising their roles.

Often considered one of the greatest films ever made, The French Connection appeared in the American Film Institute's list of the best American films in 1998 and again in 2007. In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Cast

Production

The film was originally set up at National General Pictures, but they later dropped it, and Richard Zanuck and David Brown offered to make it at Fox with a production budget of $1.5 million. The film came in $300,000 over budget at a total cost of $1.8 million.

In an audio commentary track recorded by Friedkin for the Collector's Edition DVD release of the film, Friedkin notes that the film's documentary-like realism was the direct result of the influence of having seen Z, an Algerian film by Costa-Gavras. Friedkin mentioned the film's influence on him when directing The French Connection:

After I saw Z, I realized how I could shoot The French Connection. Because he shot Z like a documentary. It was a fiction film but it was made like it was actually happening. Like the camera didn't know what was gonna happen next. And that is an induced technique. It looks like he happened upon the scene and captured what was going on as you do in a documentary. My first films were documentaries too. So I understood what he was doing but I never thought you could do that in a feature at that time until I saw Z.

The film was among the earliest to show the World Trade Center: the completed North Tower and the partially completed South Tower are seen in the background of the scenes at the shipyard following Devereaux's arrival in New York.

Casting

Though the cast ultimately proved to be one of the film's greatest strengths, Friedkin had problems with casting choices from the start. He was strongly opposed to the choice of Gene Hackman for the lead, and actually first considered Paul Newman (out of the budget range), then Jackie Gleason, Peter Boyle and a New York columnist, Jimmy Breslin, who had never acted before. However, at that time Gleason was considered box-office poison by the studio after his film Gigot had flopped several years before, Boyle declined the role after disapproving of the violent theme of the film, and Breslin refused to get behind the wheel of a car, which was required of Popeye's character for an integral car chase scene. Steve McQueen was also considered, but he did not want to do another police film after Bullitt and, as with Newman, his fee would have exceeded the movie's budget. Tough guy Charles Bronson was also considered for the role. Lee Marvin, James Caan, and Robert Mitchum were also considered; all turned it down. Friedkin almost settled for Rod Taylor (who had actively pursued the role, according to Hackman), another choice the studio approved, before he went with Hackman.

Car chase

The film is often cited as featuring one of the greatest car chase sequences in movie history. The chase involves Popeye commandeering a civilian's car (a 1971 Pontiac LeMans) and then frantically chasing an elevated train, on which a hitman is trying to escape. The action scene, coordinated by Bill Hickman, was filmed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, roughly running under the BMT West End Line (currently the D train, then the B train) which runs on an elevated track above Stillwell Avenue, 86th Street and New Utrecht Avenue in Brooklyn, with the chase ending just north of the 62nd Street station. At that point, the train hits a train stop, but is going too fast to stop in time and collides with the train ahead of it, which has just left the station.

The most famous shot of the chase is made from a front bumper mount and shows a low-angle point-of-view shot of the streets racing. Director of photography Owen Roizman wrote in American Cinematographer magazine in 1972 that the camera was undercranked to 18 frames per second to enhance the sense of speed; this effect can be seen on a car at a red light whose exhaust pipe is pumping smoke at an accelerated rate. Other shots involved stunt drivers who were supposed to barely miss hitting the speeding car, but due to errors in timing, accidental collisions occurred and were left in the final film. Friedkin said that he used Santana's cover of Peter Green's song "Black Magic Woman" during editing to help shape the chase sequence, though the song does not appear in the film, "it [the chase scene] did have a sort of pre-ordained rhythm to it that came from the music."

The scene concludes with Doyle confronting Nicoli the hitman at the stairs leading to the subway and shooting him as he tries to run back up them, its climax captured as a still shot in a theatrical release movie poster for the film. Many of the police officers acting as advisers for the film objected to the scene on the grounds that shooting a suspect in the back was simply murder, not self-defense, but director Friedkin stood by it, stating that he was "secure in my conviction that that's exactly what Eddie Egan (the model for Doyle) would have done and Eddie was on the set while all of this was being shot."

Filming locations

The French Connection was filmed in the following locations:

Awards and nominations

The American Film Institute recognizes The French Connection on several of its lists:

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies - #70
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #93
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills - #8
• AFI's 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains: Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle - #44 Hero

In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed the film as the tenth best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.

Home media releases

The French Connection has been issued in a number of home video formats. On September 25, 2001, the film was released on VHS and DVD, with both formats being released in box sets featuring both the film and its sequel, French Connection II. For a 2009 reissue on Blu-ray, William Friedkin controversially altered the film's color timing to give it a "colder" look. Cinematographer Owen Roizman, who was not consulted about the changes, dismissed the new transfer as "atrocious". On March 18, 2012, a new Blu-ray transfer of the movie was released. This time, the color-timing was supervised by both Friedkin and Roizman, and the desaturated and sometimes over-grainy look of the 2009 edition has been corrected.

In June 2023, media publications discovered that a version of the film available on digital platforms such as Apple TV and the Criterion Channel had been altered to excise a scene in the film that contains usage of racial slurs. The decision received backlash from fans and cineasts, who compared the censorship to vandalism and called out the decision for hiding its historical context. Joseph Wade compared the cut to vandalising a piece of art.

Sequels and adaptations

• French Connection II (1975) is a fictional sequel.
• NBC-TV aired a made-for-TV movie, Popeye Doyle (1986), another fictional sequel starring Ed O'Neill in the title role.

See also

• Crime film
• List of American films of 1971
• Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, a fried chicken restaurant chain that was founded in 1972 and had its name inspired by the Popeye Doyle character in the film