The French Connection

The French Connection starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider it also stars Fernando Rey and directed by William Friedkin. It’s based on a book and true story of the same name in 1969 by Robin Moore. The setting and movie takes place in New York City, two detectives Doyle (Hackman) and Russo (Scheider) with New York police in the narcotics division and are informed that heroin is being smuggled into the US by smuggler Charnier (Fernando) from France in a car.

Throughout the film there are good examples of point of view shots especially closeups and moving shots. One example is when you watch a scene in the film where Doyle and Russo are in the bar, you get a great medium shot of them then it cuts to a point of view of them looking at the people of interest or their suspects. Later there’s a moving shot of four different angles of screen direction or the focus of direction in which the actors appear to be moving to keep focus on the fast-paced scene. After Doyle spies on the drug smugglers’ boarding a subway, he gets in a car and gives chase. You get first angle of Doyle commandeering the car in a third person view, second shot is of the car moving in the screen from left to right, third angle is on Doyle driving from front of the car and the fourth angle shows us in the backseat over the shoulder point of view through the windshield. For most of these shots and other moving shots, instead of a dolly track the cameraman set in a wheelchair. The editing is very rough-edged by different scene transitions and shows disorientation and forward action-packed scenes. The film won five Academy Awards in 1971 for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Later it won three Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture, Best Actor and Best Director.

Overall, the film had an interesting story and plot, the actors were good, and the cinematography and editing was phenomenal. Had very interesting satire as well. For a film that’s not well known it is a true piece in cinema history and deserves to be deemed as a classic.

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Works Citied

Friedkin, William, director. The French Connection. Twentieth Century-Fox Video, 1971.

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Lewis, Jon. Essential Cinema: An Introduction to Film Analysis. Wadsworth Pub Co, 2017.