Gene Hackman in The French Connection Credit: Alami
Leaving one enduring cinematic classic in a career is an impressive accomplishment; giving the audience two is wonderful. However, the death of director William Friedkin at the age of 87 ensures that his two masterpieces, The Exorcist and The French Connection, will be remembered with the warmth they deserve.
The success of The Exorcist, a supernatural horror film based on a bestseller, was, admittedly, foreseeable. But the real surprise hit was Friedkin's previous film, The French Connection. The low-budget crime thriller from an obscure director with a lead actor best known for his supporting roles has been widely acclaimed, won an Oscar and made a fortune at the box office. As Friedkin noted in 2021: “He broke free and immediately went through the roof like a rocket.”
Before joining the French Connection, the director had already made four films, but none of them had much success. Although he announced his debut, the car for Sonny & Cher that «I've made better films than Good Times but never had as much fun», his adaptation of Harold Pinter's «Birthday», the burlesque comedy The Night They Raided Minsky and a milestone of queer cinema «Boys in the Orchestra». all were commercially unsuccessful. It seemed Friedkin was destined to become a hiring director, unable to climb the list of the best along with his more successful colleagues.
So it came as a slight surprise to him that he was offered a screenplay called The French Connection by Ernest Tidyman, who was best known for writing a series of novels revolving around black exploitation character John Shaft. Producer Philip D'Antoni, who had achieved notable success with Steve McQueen's 1968 police thriller Bullitt, had hoped for something similar and commissioned a thriller script from Tydeman, which was then given to Friedkin.
It was about two dedicated drug detectives chasing a French heroin smuggler, but the film wasn't exactly to the director's liking. The director later said disdainfully that «there wasn't really a script» and cursed Tidyman with weak praise: «We think he has the potential to be a top thriller writer.» Friedkin recently watched Costa-Gavras' political drama Z, and was influenced by both its brutality and documentary realism. “It was a fantastic movie, but it was shot like it was actually happening,” he explained, “like the camera didn’t know what was going to happen next.”
He took drafts of Theediman's script and then set about searching for the perfect actor to play the tough, misanthropic protagonist, Detective Jimmy «Popeye» Doyle. After stars like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen turned down the role — and the $1.5 million budget 20th Century Fox set for the film meant they would have been unavailable anyway — Friedkin considered everyone from with comedian and singer Jackie Gleason. a little unbelievably, to New York investigative journalist Jimmy Breslin, who had enough knowledge of the ugly side of city life, but absolutely no acting experience.
Finally, for the two lead roles of Doyle and his colleague Buddy «Cloudy» Russo, Friedkin chose Gene Hackman, previously nominated for an Oscar for playing Warren Beatty's brother Buck in Bonnie and Clyde, and Roy Scheider, based in New York. the actor is about to make a breakthrough in another crime drama, Klute. For the role of the antagonist Alain Charnier, he took one of his favorite actors Luis Buñuel Fernando Rey.
In a funny moment of serendipity, Friedkin intended to cast another Buñuel actor, Francisco Rabal, and so when Rey showed up in New York for his audition, it was his embarrassed surprise. However, Ray could speak both French and English, and Rabal did not speak either, so he was hired.
Gene Hackman and Marcel Bozzuffi in The French Connection By Getty
Friedkin turned his leading men into convincing detectives by sending them to the streets. As he later said, “I had both Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider riding around with Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, the real cops that their characters were based on. They imitated what they saw, which is what I wanted. I saw it all a few months before and they saw it before they made the movie.»
At first, Hackman was taken aback by Popeye's character as it was written, believing that he was rude and obnoxious, but Friedkin convinced him that he had a core of nobility instead; as he said, «He thought the guy was really racist, but I didn't. I thought it was an act he did to survive on the street.» Regarding his own preparation, he met with veteran director Howard Hawks, who told him bluntly that his previous films were «lousy» but gave him advice that defined the film. “Get a good [car] chase. Make one better than anyone.»
Shooting — as usual in the paintings of Friedkin — was chaotic. Although 20th Century Fox, according to an interview he gave to NBC, «wanted to fire me every day,» the film was low-budget enough to avoid much attention. “There was no refusal,” he said. “They had no idea how to do it differently. They didn't pay much attention to the daily papers. The French Connection wasn't the movie they were betting on.»
William Friedkin and Gene Hackman on the set of The French Connection. Credit & Copyright: Alami
His director was on the streets of New York filming his largely impromptu script as if it were a low-budget documentary, and Hackman was putting on a lifelong spectacle with audience sympathy to the limit. He was constantly angry on set, in large part because, according to his director, «Even though I was 10 years younger than Gene, I became like his father, and he hated his father.»
Friedkin refused to do more than one take if he could avoid it. “I'm much more interested in spontaneity than perfection,” he explained. “I'm not interested in striving for perfection. All this is a waste of time. If I get it on stage, it'll be a take and that's it.» And he knew that New York was a vicious, violent place: “At that time I lived on Park Avenue, and 10 or 15 minutes away from me there were all these shootings and people shooting in the streets … there was nothing embellished in the city . movie.»
However, the film's most famous scene, in which Popeye chases the hitman in a car while the gunman is on the New York elevated railroad, tested Friedkin's impromptu, free-spirited sensibility to the breaking point. As he admitted, “I didn’t have permission for the chase scene. None… we had to pay a transit guy $40,000 to shoot on the elevated train. I broke all the rules, I put myself in danger, I put the lives of others in danger, and I didn't care. I just felt like nothing was going to go wrong, and by the grace of God, it didn't.» >In the car chase in the film «French Connections», an unplanned accident occurred due to the fault of an unlucky motorist. The hired stuntman, Bill Hickman, was provoked by Friedkin taunting him by saying that he wasn't up to much. “I’ll tell you what,” Hickman replied, “I’ll teach you how to drive if you get in the car with me.” He then drove at 90 mph through 26 blocks, creating footage that was eventually used in the finished film.
Fridkin himself controlled the camera mounted on the front of the car, sitting next to Hickman. He later claimed that it was because he was single and the other operators had families, so if anything happened, he'd rather die than them. The only sign that anyone needed to get out of the way of this couple of lunatics was the police siren on the roof of the car.
However, it was a film and not a documentary, so other shots had to be made of Hackman himself being put in danger by Friedkin's wild and crazy style; This sequence ended up taking five weeks to shoot, and then it was the part of the image that was the hardest to edit. Friedkin was adamant that this should be the centerpiece of his film. “Another thing to remember about this pursuit is the old admonition of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the great American writer, that action is character,” he said. «A man does what he does and how he does it, and that's what he is, and this pursuit epitomizes the character of Popeye Doyle.»
The result was not just one of the most memorable car chases in cinema, but a visceral «you're here» action scene that was all the more impactful because it felt like something could go wrong at any moment. So it was. Doyle's collision with a woman and her baby carriage was one of the few staged stunts. Collisions with unsuspecting vehicles can be seen in the finished film, and at least one hapless motorist had to pay compensation to the production team. Every car chase previously shown on screen seemed boring by comparison.
Friedkin heeded Hawkes's advice, and then some. It also led to a good-natured rivalry with Bullitt star McQueen, who cheered the director loudly at parties, saying, «Here's the man who put on the second best chase in movie history!» In later life, Friedkin was noisy, regretting his attitude: “Then I had no doubts about it, because I was an immature, nonchalant youth. But now I wouldn't do anything like that.» But when Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie asked him how he would film it differently, he replied, «I wouldn't change shots.»
It's almost unbelievable, given Friedkin's cavalier attitude towards security, the film was eventually completed and buried almost immediately. As he later said, «A lot of places, like 42nd Street in New York, [Fox] released it as a double feature and they didn't believe in it at all.»
French Connection producer Philip D'Antoni with Jane Fonda, Gene Hackman and William Friedkin at the 1971 Academy Awards. Photo: AP
However, it took off like a rocket, he said, helped by exemplary reviews that praised the performances, Friedkin's kinetic direction, and his use of New York locations to create police procedurals that were both entertaining and challenging. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Director for Friedkin and Best Actor for Hackman, and grossed an impressive $75 million at the box office.
His legacy is almost unparalleled. Hailed as the director of one of the greatest thrillers ever made, Friedkin was quickly hired by Warner Bros to make The Exorcist, which became an even bigger hit. However, he completely disassociated himself from the sequel, cleverly titled The French Connection II, and wrote to its director, John Frankenheimer, begging him not to take on the project. He later dismissed it: “What they did next with French Connection II didn't interest me at all. He just capitalized on the title.» But it's actually a successful and complete thriller with another superb performance by Hackman, a testament to the foundations laid by Friedkin's peerless original.
A director might risk his life, his star might hate acting, and the studio might not understand what they had. But the legacy of The French Connection is as painful as it can be in cinema.
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