titled The French Connection captures the gritty reality of a true crime story like

few films can. Over the years, detective films have certainly not been in short supply. Today,

we take an in-depth look at what The French Connection teaches us about filmmaking to

see if we can figure out why it always seems to tower above the rest.

The French Connection was adapted from a non-fiction novel that recounts a real narcotics case

that took place between 1960 and 1962 in New York City. The film was released on October

9th, 1971 to great acclaim and ended up winning Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing,

Best Actor, Best Director, and was the first R-rated movie to win Best Picture at the Academy

Awards (wiki). The story follows detectives Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle and Buddy 'Cloudy'

Russo as they try to find a large heroin supply being snuck into New York City from France.

The characters Popeye and Cloudy were played by Gene Hackman and Roy Sheider respectively

and they were based on real detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso who actually have small

roles in the film. Grosso plays Klein and Egan, with a speaking part, plays Lieutenant Simonson.

After leaving the police force, both Grosso and Egan went on to have careers in the entertainment

industry—Grosso became a technical advisor and a film and television producer for everything

from Night Heat to even Pee-wee's Playhouse. He also continued to act in small roles including

a police officer in The Godfather and Detective Blasio in Friedkin's 1980 film Cruising.

Eddie Egan became a sort of celebrity because of his fearless brazen attitude and his extremely

large amount of arrests and acted in several movies and TV shows during the 70s and 80s.

Sonny Grosso: “The French Connection meant: there were street connections, there were

Spanish connections, there were Black connections, there were Italian connections; the ultimate

connection in the drug world was the French connection.”

So, what can we learn?

First, Character Introduction.

The characters in The French Connection are introduced in a very exciting, eloquent, and

economic way. William Friedkin was quoted saying, “I have a theory about thrillers.

If you open with a murder in the first two minutes, the audience will hang around for

15 minutes of exposition without getting bored,” (Film Quarterly) which is utilized here, but

our heroes are also introduced in an exciting way. The first time we see Popeye and Cloudy,

they are about to make a bust. We don't see their home life, getting ready for work,

or hanging out at the police station—we are immediately thrust into the action. They

are cops; the film is about busting drug dealers, so why not introduce them busting a drug dealer?

This goes for the introduction of all of the main characters—the classy French antagonist

classes it up, the killer kills, and the cops bust.

Action films often start out with an action setpiece of some sort with little weighing

on the plot, but what The French Connection does is offer up just a short foot chase for

action. This is brilliantly done because it isn't meant to be sheer spectacle. What

it does is it gives us a chance to see how well Popeye and Cloudy work together and sets

up the interesting details of the job as well as the little quirks they both have.

Every single choice that is made in this opening sequence sets up the characters including

everything from dialogue to wardrobe and setting. The first time we see Popeye, he is dressed

as Santa Claus—it shows us that he is a little 'out-there,' but it also shows

us that he is willing to do whatever it takes to get his man (including running around dressed

as Santa) and the image of Popeye chasing a drug dealer down the street in the Santa

outfit is a memorable way of doing that. You won't see any other officer in the film

do anything similar.

What follows is a short interrogation scene in an empty lot, which was actually the location

of the real Sonny Grosso's childhood home. In the screenplay, this scene takes place

inside Popeye's car, but this was changed to a much more intriguing location that is

in keeping with the gritty presentation of New York City. It almost conjures images of

bombed out buildings in Europe during World War II. This scene could just as easily taken

place down at the precinct in an interrogation room, but instead it is on the street, which

shows us that Popeye and Cloudy are more comfortable out on the streets of the city. They aren't

eager to get back to the safety of the precinct. They are unafraid of the jungle that is New

York City. And we'll see how this mentality affects their decisions throughout the rest

of the film.

The production hired the writer of Shaft who adapted the screenplay for a small amount

of money. The script also contained fairly different dialogue in this scene except, of

course, for the Poughkeepsie exchange.

Friedkin: “The Roy Scheider character, Buddy Russo, would always ask the suspect specific

questions about specific things while the Eddie Egan or the Popeye Doyle character would

ask him non-sequiturs like if he ever sat down on the edge of the bed and picked his

feet. And so the suspect was caught in the middle between these two techniques. He was

more afraid to answer Doyle's nonsensical questions than Russo's questions that made

sense because he didn't know really how much trouble he was in.”

Hackman: “I heard Eddie do the 'do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie' thing a

number of times when we were out in the streets in Harlem and all over the place. And I never

understood it and people on the street to this day come up to me and ask me if I pick

my feet in Poughkeepsie.”

Friedkin: “'Pick your feet in Poughkeepsie' was a phrase Eddie Egan used on almost every

suspect he ever interrogated just to unsettle them. It's just a non-sequitur to unsettle someone,

but it's asked very straight and forcefully and it's a very hard question to answer,

as you might imagine. And so it would cause the suspect to freeze up and wonder if he

had, in fact, done something in Poughkeepsie that he should be arrested for.”

However, the one who was really unsettled in this scene was Hackman who had a lot of

trouble roughing up the actor playing the dope peddler. The scene was shot in the first

week of production and they did 22 takes, but it wasn't working.

Hackman: “And so, I did, I went to him and said, 'I don't think I can do this.'

And to his credit, or maybe because he was in a bind, he decided not to let me go and

I will be eternally grateful that he didn't because it was certainly the start of my career.”

They went ahead and kept shooting the rest of the film and came back and shot this scene

much later when Hackman was in the right mindset to go through with the scene.

Scheider: “I mean, for instance, the first scene in the film, when we're chasing Alan

Weeks and we're slapping the hell out of him in that alley, well, that was the first

day of shooting and Gene and I were not very good. We weren't very convincing. We just

didn't have the fluidity and the speed and the routine of a 'good cop, bad cop'

We didn't have it down yet. So Billy said, 'alright, look, we'll scrap this. We'll

come back at the end of the movie and we'll do this. We came back and we did it in an

afternoon. It was a piece of cake, but by that time, we felt like cops.”

This seems like good advice. Much of a film hinges on the character introductions and

it might be a good idea to shoot the first scenes later in the production—especially

if it an intense scene—so that the actors have had more time to better get into the

rhythm and mindset of their character.

This scene introduces Popeye's anger and really relies on Hackman's ability to convey

the motivation Popeye has to catch the bad guys and get the information he needs to make

a big bust.

Friedkin: “I knew that he hated his father, so in order to produce anger in him, the anger

that was necessary for the character, I became like a harsh father. And so, the point of

that story is that, with every actor, the director works like a psychologist.”

So in a sequence lasting less than five minutes, we get a perfect introduction to Popeye and

Cloudy's working and personal relationship, what their motivation is, and the lengths

they'll go to complete their goal.

Number 2: building a character externally.

A character isn't just confined to the actor and the words on the page, it extends way

beyond that. We talked a bit about what wardrobe says about a character, but let's go even

further away from the physical embodiment of the character. For instance, Friedkin mentioned

that he chose Popeye's apartment building because it kind of looked like a prison.

Occasionally Popeye will toss a white straw hat in the back seat window of his car signifying

to other officers that they are undercover and on duty. I believe this hat was a nod

to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which was released a few years earlier. In Butch

Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the outlaws are chased by a determined lawman named Joe

Lefors who would stop at nothing to catch them. In the film, he is recognized by his

white straw hat— very similar to the one used in The French Connection. Popeye is also

incredibly determined and relentless to catch the bad guys and this visual nod does a great

job regardless of whether it is noticed.

The cold says a lot about world that Popeye inhabits. New York City itself feels hostile

and uncaring in the French Connection and, for Popeye specifically, it seems as though

he is navigating a harsh world where there isn't any protection from those who live

outside the law. As it turns out, this aspect was a lucky accident.

Friedkin: “By the time the studio said, 'okay, make that film,' all of the guys

who said, 'go make it' were fired. If I had waited another month it would have never

have been made. So when we made it, it was the coldest winter on record in New York City

and it was literally freezing cold and that's when we had to make it.”

Popeye also has a bit of a fetish for girls in tall boots, which is briefly set up once

and then later we see him intrigued by a girl wearing boots who's riding a bike. This

adds to the characteristic of Popeye being a hunter—always watching and waiting to

pounce on his prey.

The aspect I really want to talk about is motivated action. The reason why the car chase

in The French Connection is considered one of the greatest in cinema history is that

it reveals more about Popeye's character than anything else in the film and yet, it

is an action-packed setpiece. Nowadays, it seems big spectacular setpieces only go as

far as furthering the plot and often not even that. What The French Connection does is it

uses the chase scene as a literal and metaphorical representation of Popeye's obsession with

catching the perp—no matter the cost. People's lives are at risk, but still he is determined

to let nothing stand between him and catching this man. In a way, the chase is a metaphor

for the dynamic between the police and the criminals responsible for perpetuating the

drug epidemic. These criminals literally have the higher ground, able to coast along while

Popeye must stay grounded dodging a multitude of obstacles in his path just to keep up,

and the only way he can catch up to his man is to break the rules that the criminals aren't

obligated to follow.

The chase (and the sniper) didn't actually appear in the script initially and Friedkin

said that the original script had everything you could want from a police thriller except

a big setpiece like this. Friedkin had the same people who made the famous chase scene

for Bullitt and wanted to do something different.

Friedkin: “I should tell you, the origin of the chase was, you mentioned Hickman and

Phil D'Antoni, they had done Bullitt. And I saw Bullitt and I said, 'I can't do

the same thing they've done. The've done the car chase about as good as it could be

done then, I've got to do something different.' And D'Antoni and I started walking the streets

of New York and while we were talking about what we could do, I hear the subway rumbling

beneath my feet. The idea came to me right off the streets—what about a car chasing

a train?”

Another good example of this dynamic is the scene where Popeye waits outside of the fancy

restaurant. This scene builds upon the characters in such a way that shows that crime, in fact,

does pay and the police are burdened by the same civility that separates them from those

who break the law. A side note: it was so cold while they were making this scene that

the cast and crew would have to go into the shoe store Popeye was standing in front of to warm up

in between takes.

Number 3: Documentary Style.

On another level, the 'French Connection' seems to unintentionally refer to the influence

that French filmmaking was having on the American film industry during the 60s and 70s. The

Hollywood Renaissance was rooted in the principles of the French New Wave and Auteur Theory that

had started a decade earlier.

Friedkin: “Then the next change in cinema was Godard's 'Breathless,' which changed-

À bout de soufflé—which changed the way films were made. All of a sudden, a guy could

go out with a small crew, very few lights—or no lights—and shoot with hand-held cameras

and tell a story that people would see in a theater and it was not formal in any way.

It was informal. It was like jazz music. And that changed cinema to this day.”

Because the story was based on actual events, Friedkin wanted to evoke a sense of realism

to the film. He had the actual narcotics detectives who cracked the case (Eddie Egan and Sonny

Grosso) working on the film as advisors and it was the cooperation of Egan and Grosso

as well as their friends in the police department that allowed the film to achieve this level

of realism.

Scheider: “And we just tried to make it as real as we possibly could. That was the

fun of it. The fun of it was making it real. We had all those mornings of coming back from