The Miseducation of Patrick Ripoll: The French Connection

Nobody busts up a bar full of black guys like Gene Hackman.

By the way, you might want to wait and let the glow wear off before trying French Connection II.

I'm with you on this one, Patrick. I saw it for the first time about a year and a half ago and loved it too. I had just never gotten around to seeing it. I haven't bothered with the sequel.

You ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?

One of my favorite movies of all time. I don't know if you've seen the features or knew about this already, Pat, but the guys who play Simonson and Klein are Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, respectively, the real cops on whom Popeye and Cloudy were based.

So many beautiful details, like the way cops trail a suspect in teams on foot, or using non-sensical phrases like the Poughkeepsie line to confuse perps and get them to admit to things.

Not to mention the sheer visceral thrill of a cop movie filmed during winter in New York.

And Don Ellis's score is fucking brilliant.

If Batman Begins disappointed me in any way, it was because Nolan and/or Goyer threw around The French Connection when discussing the tone of the film.

Whenever someone wants to know what the "big deal" is about French Connection, I tell them to look at any cop movie made before it.

Yeah, some films are just classics that will always hold up no matter how many times they're ripped off. The French Connection is one of those classics.

Follow this up with a showing of Friedkin's TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA. Similar in tone to CONNECTION and an even better car chase.

I must be in the minority then. Saw it for the first time this winter and I was really disappointed. I just felt it didn't go anywhere. When it's all said and done, the whole investigation isn't anything big. The film is long but there isn't much character development.

Plus, the ending is just fuckin stupid (on film). The last shot in the abandoned factory is incredibly beautiful though.

Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but two things are worth noting:

1) It's better the second time (and each time after that). I can't say I was disappointed the first time I saw it, but I definitely didn't feel like it was the greatest thing since loaved bread. But I watched it a second time, and enjoyed it enormously, getting thrown into the whole world much better than the first time, when a) I had preconceived expectations, and b) I was trying to keep up with the plot, which is minimally exposited.

2) The film is rich in character development, it's just that the characters don't follow arcs. Popeye doesn't learn anything or become a different person, but he's an established, fully realized character the first time you see him. Same with Russo, same with Charnier. It's a procedural, so that's partly the point. The movie is about how the characters shape the events, not how the events shape the characters.

Just my $.02.

It's been a while since I've seen this film and I want to say it was on VHS when I did see it, as the DVD wasn't yet released.

Time to rent it again and enjoy it on my new HDTV.

The car chase should rock my world!

I think this makes a great double showing with Dog Day Afternoon.

I love this. I love the characters, I love their interactions, I love the music, I love the entire feel of the thing. Not much else to say, but it gets better and better every time I see it.

And just to add, while it's nowhere near the original, the sequel is far more inventive and surprising than I would have expected. Watch it, they do some interesting things with the Popeye character.

I remember disliking it when I saw it years ago, but I've recently come around to the whole "procedural" approach to movies, and seeing professionals do their shit, professionally, with no concession to handholding the audience, and no real fantasy elements. See also: THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER.

Some things:

* I'm pretty sure there are white subtitles against a white background at one point in the movie, which is strangely awesome.

* Hackman giving that cheeky little wave to the French connection in the final ambush is one of the all-time greatest FUCK YEAH! moments in the movies.

* The ending has an hilarious "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet" thing going on. Also great.

This is how I felt after first seeing The Godfather. And Singin' In The Rain.

You can smell the city when you watch The French Connection. It's wonderfully ugly. That horrible pizza.

That was the best thing about the film. I liked when they did the stakeout outside the restaurant or whatever. It felt like you were watching real cops go about their business.

Otherwise though, I wasn't really sold on the film. I couldn't get into the characters, and isn't a terribly deep plot.

I was amused that when Hackman starts chasing the guy in the opening it is clearly night, but when he actually catches him it is daytime. Did they run all night?

That's what struck me most about seeing this film, along with The Warriors and Escape from New York in the last six months. It brought back the conception I had of NY when I was a kid: that it was an ugly, stinky and violent place.

It's insane that almost every exterior footage in NY (including the car/train chase) was all stolen, a.k.a. they just started filming.

The commentary with Friedkin is great. The chase in particular was done with no licenses. They just drove down the street filming, not telling anyone beforehand. Freidkin says something terrible about himself, something like "I was a reckless, self-absorbed youth", saying he would never even consider doing such a thing now, and that he'd do it differently if he had it to do over again. Pretty crazy.

So I decided to sit down and watch this again tonight, and it struck me how aloof the movie was. Apparently Popeye got a cop killed at sometime in the past. The feds aren't impressed, but who cares? Doyle kills another cop at the end: how does Doyle react? He doesn't. Who cares? Doyle lives in a hovel, but who cares? The movie never gets inside the characters' heads. The characters aren't particularly cold, but the movie is cold towards its characters. I can't think offhand of another movie that does this.

Maybe that's why I had a problem with the film on my first viewing.

Well, Roy Scheider is there to try and ground Hackman's character somewhat--he's easily more readable as a normal human being, whereas Popeye Doyle is solely driven by whatever he happens to be pursuing, and doesn't really care about anything outside of that (boldly underlined at the end of the movie).

I've read that the car crash during the chase scene was accidental--actually, everything I've read goes along with that, but there are two different accounts of the details: one that has it being a mis-cue between stunt drivers, and one that says that the guy Doyle's car crashes into was an average Joe on his way to work, and that the producers paid his repair bill for the car.


P.S. A couple days ago I saw a Lincoln Continental just like the one in the movie (same color, even) with antique car plates. One more thing to make me feel older.

I didn't take it as being aloof, more that like a good procedural, it doesn't waste any of its time coddling the audience or going out of its way to get them up to speed. We're simply dropped into the proceedings with a bird's eye view. Hence the cop he got killed in the past is referenced, but unexplained. Why bother? Everyone involved knows the shorthand anyway, and the details are unimportant to us. The only important thing is that we know that it affects the way people interact with him.

That he doesn't react to killing the cop at the end is one of my favorite parts. He is so single-minded in his pursuit of the French connection that he simply does not care. He lives in a hole because he's a dissheveled mess who is good for one thing - catching criminals.

I feel like there's a lot there to see and discover, it just isn't as overt. I heard a lot of the same criticisms last summer with "Miami Vice", but I loved it for the same reasons.

I felt the characters were more human than Popeye Doyle. The viewer never gets close to anyone in The French Connection.

Again, I just don't think that was ever Friedkin's intention. The focus of this movie is the case, not the characters. I don't think you can fault the movie for not allowing the viewer to "get close" to Popeye Doyle when that was never the movie's goal.

I agree, but I don't find the case to be very interesting. I feel as a viewer I'm also kept away from the case.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. This movie is a piece of shit.

And yes a lot of it has to do with the fact that it was so overhyped before I actually saw it some 5-6 years ago.

Plain and simple...it's long and it's boring. Popeye is an interesting enough character, but thats about the only redeeming quality in it.

And fuck that chase scene. He is fucking chasing a TRAIN, in a car on the ground. That was not exciting to me at all.

And yes, the ending is TERRIBLE. Whose genius idea was it to end a movie like that? It is ok if tv serial dramas do someting like that, but not a damn movie!

This thread has been pretty surprising, but this is downright ridiculous. Your credibility would be better served by dialing down the hyperbole. "I didn't care for it" does not translate to "It's a piece of shit", especially with one of the all-time classics of the crime genre.


The ending is one of the best parts. The shot of the empty warehouse and the title card adding that the french connecton got away is a hard, uncompromising jolt of downbeat realism.

Anybody's got the right to hate on French Connection. But you better have a damn good reason why. BRING IT, FAZER!

Oh, he's been pretty clear, hasn't he? It's an overhyped, overlong, boring piece of shit. That's legitimate criticism, right? Right???

I felt the fact the french connection got away wasn't realistic at all. The police have an abandoned warehouse surrounded, wich is on an island accessible by a bridge and the guy they came to arrest manages to get away. What the hell?

yea, it was a hypberbolic criticism, but the more and more i see ppl talking about how great this movie is, the more angry i get.

i dont know what it is about this movie in particular that gets me going, but I just disliked it so much.

I will try and be more articulate.

First the hype, yea it was way overhyped when I got to see it, and usually in those situations especially with movies from the 60s and 70s it is a lot easier to be disappointed after seeing what movies did with the genre over the next 30 years.

Second, Popeye is an interesting character because he is almost too unlikable for a lead, which is kinda cool. But he is usually too huge an asshole for me. Scheider is a nice foil to him, but he was basically wall paper compared to the lines and scenes hackman was getting. Scheider's presence was pretty much wasted.

Third, the action/chase...i guess you have to chalk SOME of it up to being an older movie and hollywood has produced a lot more exciting stuff since...but the train chase was just a stupid proposition when you think about it. After the perp gets on the train and popeye chases it in the car, i started to laugh. Those shots of popeye looking up at the train as if its going to make any sudden moves were ridiculous. Its on a fucking rail. You know where its going to go. Also, the actual car sequence had no sense of speed or urgency
Even the car wrecks popeye gets into felt muted.

fourth, I am in total agreement with alexor about the ending. The fact that the villain gets away...OFF SCREEN from a building that is supposedly surrounded and we just hear a gunshot with no resolution whatsoever except for a text ending was the biggest "fuck you" of them all. I felt cheated by that ending. Now you can defend it as being "realistic portrayal of police work", etc. It was a shitty and lazy ending in my opinion that made me feel like everything leading up to that point was a waste of my time. I mean if they wanted to make a sequel to it and wanted to leave ppl hanging, they could have done it in a MUCH better way than coming to such an abrupt halt.

It's not a criticism, I liked the approach. It was very effective.

So I just watched this for the first time tonight and the chase scene didn't impress me as much as I expected. My first instinct would be to say it is because of everything that has come since then, but I saw Bullitt at Hot Fuzztival and was blown away by its chase. Has anyone seen French Connection on the big screen? I'm curious if my small TV was a factor in my reaction to the chase.

I saw this one when it was first released at the theatre. It has always been a favorite 70's film of mine as well as the Seven Ups. Gene Hackman was great as well as Roy Scheider. I have watched it several times since picking it up in the DVD classics section. The commentary/Documentary is very well done. I think it holds up great as far as current action movie offerings go today. Now I have to watch it again!

This thread makes me question some chewers taste in movies. Seriously, French Connection a piece of shit? Im all for opinions, but fuck you anyway.

Just watched this and had a good time, as I didn't feel overly hyped ahead of time.

 

It was another check off my AFI Top 100 List, and I'd always heard about the car chase, but other than that I was going in blind. As is, I admit it takes about twenty minutes or so for the film to get going. Being inundated with French and sleight of hand is hard to follow, but luckily that's followed by Gene Hackman beating up black men. OVER AND OVER. For a minute I thought I was getting a nice dose of early '70s racism, but then it turns out that, although you should "never trust a nigger," you can if they're an undercover cop.

 

Actually, the undercurrent of racism in Hackman's Popeye lends shade to a relatively unexplored character. Like it's said above, the film throws us in medias res and doesn't care if you can keep up. Popeye is a wreck, but other than Mulderig we don't get much outside opinion about him. The Chief trusts him and Russo enough (at first) to get them the wire taps, so we know Popeye and his partner are good cops. Maybe not the best of people, although they are fun to watch together (I love when they're listening to the wire tap tapes and are cracking up). Speaking of Scheider, up until a few years ago I'd only seen him in Jaws and considered him to be a bit of a one-hit wonder. Little did I know the beauty of Marathon Man, All That Jazz, and this.

 

The sniper attack all the way up to the end is when the movie shines. It's well-paced, has a pumping score, and the pov shots are incredibly immersive. I can see where the likes of Ronin and the Bourne films got their inspiration. In fact, I can see how this film is responsible for re-writing not just crime movies but crime fiction in general. I got a serious Frank Miller's Daredevil vibe at times, especially when it came to Daredevil busting up a bar for information and Ben Urich investigating into the underworld. Serious inspiration here, complete with Hackman chasing a subway train and throwing his hat down in frustration being aped by Bill Paxton in Predator 2 as he chases a car and throws his notepad down in frustration. Am I imagining these connections? Maybe. Would it be a stretch to say the runaway El-Train fight in Spiderman 2 homaged the chase in this movie? Maybe.

 

I can't believe a mother, complete with baby carriage, is shot and left for dead but that's the New York of '70s movies (and Jason Takes Manhattan). I could believe Travis Bickle is prowling these streets.

 

The ending truly is a head scratcher. I can understand the dour realism of Charnier getting away, but the execution was so jarring and non-committal. Eh, maybe it'll work better on second viewing.