"Mr. Devereaux, is this your first trip to New York? Why did you choose to come by ship?"The strong Gene Hackman, the ugly Fernando Rey, and the cool Roy Scheider. Finally I paid a really old debt today when I decided to watch William Friedkin's The French Connection (5 Oscars!). I remember, when I was around ten sitting in our local movie theater waiting for the E.T. checking all the stills from the forthcoming films. It was approximately the middle of the eighties (back to my home country that time we had to wait really a lot for some of the films), and that time I was sure that this movie wasn't made for me. Blue-grey colors, dark smelly streets, raincoats and long American cars. It looked too real. Some years, even a decade later the movies from the '70s became my favorite ones, but somehow this classic slided out from my hand. I suppose the reason was the director himself. Here is the time to confess, that The Exorcist (1973) is really not among my all time best films...
But. Step back two years in time. The 'connection between the axis of Marseille and New York is about drugs of course. 1971. The streets of Brooklyn are starving for some dope; the demand is really high (higher than the under construction WTC towers already visible in the background). Alain Charnier (for me he remains Bunuel's Ray) is the French connection, who promises 60 kilograms 89% pure junk. An "absolute dynamite". According to this circumstances, he is planning to deal with the highest distributors: Weinstock is the head of the New York drug mafia, they and even more their interest found each other pretty easily. But - as it used to be - there are cops in these kind of tales, too. Popeye (Hackman's Oscar winning acting, his best after (chronologically before) as Harry Caul in Coppola's masterful The Conversation) and Russo (Scheider couldn't participate in the sequel, because he was shooting another important classic in 1975...) get the tail of the case accidentally. And these guy's instincts are never at fault. At least not in Hollywood.
What I really liked is the way how the film is developing their investigation. The movie tells as much to its viewer as Popeye and Russo understands the pieces. We learn step by step the role of all the characters, who first seem like some never solvable puzzle...
Two more things. The minimalist score is a perfect choice. Don Ellis' "music" isn't a real soundtrack, it is more only the "sound" of the heights of the scenes. Connected to this, another plus is the atmosphere: The recent American Gangster isn't a bad one at all, but I starkly assert that if Ridley Scott's film gave the real feeling of the late '60s, early '70s, then after Friedkin's atmospheric realism you might take a shower.
"Did you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?" :))
Watch it, of course.
9/10
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