[You want not to think for once. No “female problem” movie
reviews; no fancy emotions, no artsy-fartsy stuff. “I wanna be stupid!” you
say. “I want basic entertainment where the bad guys get a kick in the ass, to
go with cheap chips and brewskis!” We hear you! Without further ado….)
Let me try to keep this simple, and not fuss over every
sentence as I do with some other entries (that call for that, for good reason).
This movie should be fairly familiar to people about age 45 and older, and I
would think among many younger ones too. It may seem old-hat and old-fashioned
now (and certainly its style seems echoed in numerous police shows, starting I
guess with Hill Street Blues, since),
but it has a few distinctions:
(1) it is one of only two movies (the other being The Exorcist) comprising the basis for
the reputation of its director William Friedkin, one of the directors who are
lumped in with the “Second Golden Age of Hollywood” directors (like Scorsese,
Coppola, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, and others); (2) it made Gene Hackman a
major star, after his only other notable role being that of Clyde Barrow’s
brother in Bonnie and Clyde (1967);
(3) it also jump-started the movie career of costar Roy Scheider, impressing
Steven Spielberg enough that he made Scheider his shore police chief in Jaws (1975) (according to Jaws DVD commentary); and…
(4) It is perhaps the first major film of the seventies that
introduced, in what Friedkin called its “induced-documentary” style, a sort of
quick-shot, quick-edited style that seems geared to short attention spans.
(Some discussion of what arduous work it took to make this film is in the
book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls…[see
end note 1].) This quick-moving
style, I think, it what keeps it interesting on repeat viewings, while its
dreary wintertime New York setting, tanky Vietnam-era cars (the type that
occasionally could use starter fluid to get running), and suitably weary-colored
cinematography may seem apropos for a story of dour, intrepid police business
in a bitter winter, but may be like ashes in young people’s mouths today.
This movie (Wikipedia article here), of course, is based on a nonfiction book by Robin Moore,
about a real-life police investigation and foiling of a major heroin-smuggling
operation in New York City that was the largest such bust until that time (and
perhaps for some years after). The two police who spearheaded the operation,
which apparently was in the very early 1960s (about 10 years before FC was made), were Irish-stock Eddie
Egan and Italian-American Sonny “Cloudy” Grosso; at least they became the basis
for the two major figures in the fictional story.
The real-life investigation involved federal-level
operatives as well as New York police; and I think, from what Friedkin says in
his during-the-movie commentary on the DVD (worth checking out if you are
really interested in this film), the movie—with some boiling-down
aspects—represents the main features
of the investigation pretty well (that is, the movie distills the story down
quite a bit). (According to Friedkin in DVD commentary, there were considerably
more operatives involved in the actual investigation than the four men involved
in the movie—Popeye, Cloudy, Mulderig, and Klein. Also, I think the real
investigation took considerably longer than the several weeks it seems to be in
the movie.)
Two star cops anchor
the story
The two New York policemen, of course, were apparently well
enough represented by the two stars of the movie: for one thing, Egan,
portrayed as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle who is played by Hackman in a porkpie hat and
blue-collarish-guy manner, was, by all suggestions you gather from the movie
and otherwise, a very dedicated, even slightly manic, policeman who was
effective enough (if sometimes unorthodox) in his work. This dedication (and
personal style) seem to have been essential to the successful outcome of this
heroin bust. Grosso, portrayed as Buddy “Cloudy” Russo and by Scheider in the
film, was a more subdued, seemingly more level-headed partner (the nickname
“Cloudy,” a play on the real man’s name, was apparently inspired by his
relatively saturnine personality); nevertheless he was also essential, I
suppose, in giving some practical grounding to the more spirited, even somewhat
rampaging style of Egan/Doyle.
Egan also has a role in the film, as Doyle and Russo’s
supervisor, Walt Simonson, and Grosso has a role as federal-level helper
Klein; he is the investigator who follows Alain Charnier (casually referred to
as “Frog 1,” and played by Spaniard Fernando Rey), when he travels to
Washington, D.C., to meet secretly with Sal Boca (played by Tony Lo Bianco).
There is plenty of background available on this movie—in the
DVD, on the Internet, and in such a book as Easy
Riders, Raging Bulls (end note 1).
(On the DVD, there is even extras honoring policemen Egan and Grosso, as if
the DVD was made as much for a NYPD market as for anyone else.)
There is some insider-speak one might be confused by in this
film. The most common police slang is “make” or some variation on that—which
means, here, “recognize.” It can be used in terms of both a cop “making”
(recognizing) a criminal as what he is and a criminal doing similar with an
undercover cop.
Hackman’s performance establishes a lot of the flavor of
Popeye, which became iconic in the 1970s; one thing that (personally) strikes
me today is his pointing with his index finger, both in friendly contexts and
not, which today seems rude or crude and strikes me as a bit of overacting on
Hackman’s part, but apparently was acceptable enough as part of Popeye then.
Hackman was a Midwesterner, and Friedkin makes a point on the DVD of saying
that Hackman was by no means his first choice for the role; one actor he
preferred was Peter Boyle, who had appeared in, among others, the film Joe (~1970). Friedkin had to ride
Hackman hard when making FC to get the
manic city-Irishman quality he apparently wanted out of him; this apparently
became one key to the film’s success and to the ascent of Hackman’s career,
partly because if Hackman is remembered for any character, it is this one.
One of the most well-developed scenes in the movie is when
Popeye and Cloudy are in the nightclub after work, as the real-life singing
group The Three Degrees is performing (they later had a radio hit with “When
Will I See You Again?”). Popeye is shown to be prodigiously intuitive, as he is
intrigued by, and examines, a table including an unsettling mix of
characters: “two drug connections” whom Popeye “make[s]”; an apparent police
functionary identified by Cloudy as “that policy guy from Queens”; an ex-con
referred to as “Jewish lucky”; and a few others, including a man whom they
eventually will identify as Sal Boca, who turns out to be the on-the-street
point man for the big heroin case that is the focus of the movie.
It later becomes key to Popeye’s case that he presents to
his supervisor Walt, in arguing for further support such as a wiretap, that Sal
Boca is engaging in activity linked to Joel Weinstock, a figure who has an
illicit banking role, who apparently had been involved in such activity in the
past; according to some background info (maybe on the movie DVD), the fictional
Weinstock character actually represented more than one person with the same
kind of role in the real-life case. Also, it is interesting that the film does
not spell out that some players in this drug conspiracy are members of the
Mafia; such a term is never used in the film, though the overall story—what you
would have expected in such a milieu and in 1961 or so—would seem to suggest
their involvement. In fact, FC came
out a year before The Godfather,
which arguably was the film that put the concept of the Mafia squarely in the
American popular consciousness, in all its aspects (“romanticizing” and
otherwise, with accepted terminology and certain stock concepts like “sleeping
with the fishes”).
Dated, and
race-related, qualities; car chase clinches excitement
It is interesting to consider that, while the real story of FC took place in about 1961 and was
something of an unstated Mafia-related story, the issue of Blacks’ involvement
in the story is different, as posing potential controversy. Even if a Black
drug-using culture was part of the story in 1961 (which I’m not sure about), it
is so conspicuously an aspect in the 1971 movie that, today, we would say this
movie seems a bit racist in making it seem that the main beneficiaries of a
huge heroin shipment that means “Everybody’s going to get well” are streetwise,
big-afro’d Blacks who hang out in their own clubs, with occasional soul music
emanating from a jukebox. This seems like a sort of early-1970s stereotype—as
it would be in the eyes of Archie Bunker types—of what segment of the U.S.
population was going to hell in such a way that it was the magnet for major
Mafia-shepherded drug crime.
Meanwhile, from what I’ve heard, when Blacks first saw this
film in 1971, they cheered as if at a gloriously redeeming expose, because it
showed how abusive a white cop could be to Blacks, as Doyle is with those he
accosts to press them for information, etc.
In a sense, Doyle with his angry persona not only was
someone for an angry white audience to identify with, but the movie as a whole
seems to echo anger across the board in the later Vietnam-War years: anger
among Blacks; anger throughout society at how things seemed to come apart at
the seams… And the chop-chop editing seems to mirror almost a fit-throwing way
of relating a story that wasn’t meant to comfort, but was tailored to a spell
of venting by—whoever.
Of course, if early-’70s viewers didn’t get enough easy “catharsis”
from all the more typical frenetic police-thriller action in this film, there
was the famous car chase, with Popeye driving the Pontiac whatever-muscle-car
under the El train to catch up with Charnier’s ruthless right-hand man Pierre
Nicoli, played by Marcel Bozzuffi. Made to top the famous car chase in the Steve
McQueen thriller Bullitt (1968),
this one was filmed over about two weeks, in conditions Friedkin was young and
reckless enough to pursue (and which he seems to admit he would never try
today). However many cars were used, and obviously a stunt driver and not
simply Hackman was used to drive the car (though he does drive it in select places),
this sequence remains exciting with each re-viewing, and shows what can be done
without CGI; for one thing, those are
real collisions the Pontiac has with vehicles whose drivers apparently
weren’t expecting them.
Sequel
FC was enough of a
hit that, in a new technique for Hollywood movies that weren’t narrow genre
fare, it spawned a sequel, with Roman numeral in the title (French Connection II, without “The”),
similar to The Godfather’s spouting a
similarly titled sequel—FC II
appearing in 1975. FC II is what
today we would call a star vehicle; it doesn’t have nearly as much of a story
as the first installment, nor as much suspense/interest. Hackman does a good
job with a character study in this sequel—as he chases after and eventually
catches Alain Charnier, again played by Spaniard Fernando Rey—Popeye traveling
with big set of bags to Marseilles, France, to do the honors.
One aspect of the sequel that may put a pall on the viewing
pleasure of some is a spell of withdrawal from heroin that Popeye undergoes,
after having been addicted by baddie Charnier. Presumably this is to make you
more sympathetically gung-ho in backing Popeye’s fierce mission to vanquish
Charnier. The movie is well constructed, visually and editing-wise, by director
John Frankenheimer—the director of the first Manchurian Candidate. But it is probably primarily for fans of the
first FC, and then they might see it
only once.
End note 1.
Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex,
Drugs, & Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
