The French Connection
1971
William Friedkin
The problem with saying that a film has "aged poorly" is that half the country has no fucking clue what you're talking about. Even acknowledging that something may not mean in 2025 what it was intended to mean in 1971 is a bridge too far for some people. I'm TOO WOKE if I say some negative shit about The French Connection. I can't imagine anyone would be on Puke on Your Birthday calling me a woke libturd (without the anonymous moniker and an obvious layer of irony), so when I point this kind of stuff out, I'm mostly creating strawmen. Still, at the same time, I could probably see a boomer say something like "You can't make movies like The French Connection anymore!", which is absolutely not true. It's just that, if you're gonna make a movie in which the good guys are crooked cops, then you're probably gonna have to depend on a healthy boost from the anti-woke conservative crowd to make a profit.
So, okay, yes, to out myself: I felt uncomfortable with the amorality of the leading man, Popeye Doyle (played admirably by Gene Hackman, r.i.p.). If I'm wrong to write about it here, I'm only wrong in that I have probably written about it too many times in the past. Off the top of my head, Dirty Harry is probably the best example of the phenomenon (and the most coherent argument I've made on the subject, all things considered). There is a main character, he is a cop, he doesn't play by the rules, he wins the day despite and even because he doesn't play by the rules. Which is fine, because at the end of the day it's a fictional movie from 54 years ago. However, the film itself is giving the stamp of approval to Doyle's actions. It's saying that it's okay that he's breaking the rules, because he's catching the bad guys in the process.
The problem—the reason it hasn't "aged well," the thing that makes me WOKE—is that police officers today, like right now, like RIGHT AS I'M TYPING THIS, are out there in the real world, in urban environs, also not playing by the rules. I see it on TV and online. Cops like Doyle, beating the shit out of people, sometimes even killing people, and at the end of the day being rewarded for their actions, either with paid leave and a cushy desk job at worst and the undying loyalty of half of this fucked-up blue-flag-wavin' population at best. Cops like Popeye Doyle have always been valorized. It's happening within this movie. He's a "good cop" who "gets results." Pay no mind to communities he lays waste to in the process.
The problem—the reason it hasn't "aged well," the thing that makes me WOKE—is that police officers today, like right now, like RIGHT AS I'M TYPING THIS, are out there in the real world, in urban environs, also not playing by the rules. I see it on TV and online. Cops like Doyle, beating the shit out of people, sometimes even killing people, and at the end of the day being rewarded for their actions, either with paid leave and a cushy desk job at worst and the undying loyalty of half of this fucked-up blue-flag-wavin' population at best. Cops like Popeye Doyle have always been valorized. It's happening within this movie. He's a "good cop" who "gets results." Pay no mind to communities he lays waste to in the process.
Okay, now that that's established, I'll tell you the interesting thing about The French Connection. Despite all the proto-copaganda throughout, I still found the movie to be really well-made and taut and exciting. The need for ACAB in 2025 did not ruin this 1971 cop movie for me. First of all, there are legitimately thrilling sequences all over this thing. I hate cops, but watching cops do their thing with an unlimited budget can be interesting in fictional settings. (I almost wished I had watched this film right after White Heat, since it feels like a natural extension of the pro-cop detail-oriented police work that we witnessed in that movie.) All the tailing and whatnot, it's good stuff. Then, of course, there's the car chase, which is usually ranked as one of the best in movie history. I don't have to be "rooting for the cops to catch the bad guys" to get excited by fast cars and faster trains.
I'll get to the second thing in a moment, but writing about the car chase reminded me of a phrase that I saw from a quote from Pauline Kael's review of this film: "jolts for jocks." It's a subtle criticism of the fact that this is all basically one big chase, without any nuance. I get it, and I think she's onto something. However, as I established with Bridge of Spies, I think there's a lot of room for films like this, where it's all text and that text is exciting. The problem with the majority of contemporary movies is that they really are all jolts for jocks. You remember the ones that make you think long afterward. But you have to find a balance. I am still shaken after watching the pure cinema that was the extremely dense Russian Ark. I needed something like The French Connection to loosen me up, just a little bit. Just a little jolt for this jock.
And but so the second thing that helped make The French Connection's "poor aging" not really ruin the movie for me was that it was at least upfront enough about the amorality of its main characters that there's wiggle room to view the film however you want. When Doyle drops the N-word within the first like five minutes, it becomes a Rorschach test—do you consider him a flawed hero, a good cop despite his flaws, or do you consider him a bad cop because he uses his flaws as leverage to win? I know which way the film wants you to lean, which is why it's aged poorly. But the door is still open for you.
I pretty often preach that it's important to view a film from your own POV, and that you can see within a movie pretty much anything you choose to see (within reason). You bring yourself to the experience. You're only going to see Popeye Doyle as the bad guy if you open your goddamn eyes to what is happening in America right now (and has been for too long). Not everyone does that. It's possible to view this movie as a thrilling 104-minute chase scene, especially if you have a Taken view of the world (everyone is bad, danger around every corner, every stranger is a communist illegally voting for Biden twice), and think that Doyle needs to get the bad guys, by any means necessary.
I pretty often preach that it's important to view a film from your own POV, and that you can see within a movie pretty much anything you choose to see (within reason). You bring yourself to the experience. You're only going to see Popeye Doyle as the bad guy if you open your goddamn eyes to what is happening in America right now (and has been for too long). Not everyone does that. It's possible to view this movie as a thrilling 104-minute chase scene, especially if you have a Taken view of the world (everyone is bad, danger around every corner, every stranger is a communist illegally voting for Biden twice), and think that Doyle needs to get the bad guys, by any means necessary.
Think about this, though. Doyle is needled by an FBI agent throughout the film for some past unexplained fuck-up in which another cop was killed. It is thus established that getting a cop killed is one of the cardinal sins of policing. Okay, got it. But then, during this thrilling car-vs-subway chase scene, which wouldn't have happened if Doyle hadn't 'roided out and stolen a car and chased the damn train, up there on the moving subway... a cop is killed. Shot by the bad guy. A bad guy that only had a reason to kill because Doyle was chasing him. In a sense, another cop is dead because of Doyle's actions.
And guess what? This is never mentioned again. This is how I know that the film is not even trying to paint Doyle in any actual negative light. It can't be negative—he's a cop! We can just wipe clear the memory of another cop getting killed because of his actions, since the actual emotional logistics of it would completely derail the movie. Kinda like how conservatives today are all about the thin blue line and supporting police forces, and yet it was those same conservatives who killed a cop during the January 6th insurrection. They don't seem to talk about that one too much, do they? Maybe they should watch The French Connection. That would sooth their poor bruised pardoned souls.
And guess what? This is never mentioned again. This is how I know that the film is not even trying to paint Doyle in any actual negative light. It can't be negative—he's a cop! We can just wipe clear the memory of another cop getting killed because of his actions, since the actual emotional logistics of it would completely derail the movie. Kinda like how conservatives today are all about the thin blue line and supporting police forces, and yet it was those same conservatives who killed a cop during the January 6th insurrection. They don't seem to talk about that one too much, do they? Maybe they should watch The French Connection. That would sooth their poor bruised pardoned souls.
Sigh... it was a good movie.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: The Zoom was last night, and the discussion is going up tomorrow. We're talking peens with Magic Mike.
4 comments:
Frank here...are you absolutely sure you know which way the film wants you to feel about Popeye? I genuinely don't remember, but I remember feeling it was a movie about obsession and crossing lines and losing yourself and it not being a good thing. But I could have been projecting my own views.
(Frank again) The problem with "you cant make movies like this anymore" is there were contemporary reviews deriding movies like this and Dirty Harry as Fascist propaganda. Those voices got drowned out I guess, but they were there.
Thanks for this. It's helpful for me to actually respond to real people instead of getting wrapped up in my own shit.
I would say that I am not 100% certain about how the film wants us to feel about Popeye, but I am probably 85% certain. In my mind, the proof is right there in the movie poster, the image at the top of this blog post. "Doyle is bad news—but a good cop." It's proven time and again that his flaws are forgiven because he gets results. Maybe he's not valorized for it (he's taken off the task force, per the closing credits), but he's not punished for it either. And the way I view the ACAB movement (if there is such a thing, or I'm doing the projecting this time) is that we are at the point where we should be arguing that the flaws affect the policing, that there's no such thing as a good cop because there are cops who are "bad news" like Doyle, and there are cops who "put up with" the "bad news" like Doyle, and basically no cops who are able to say "this is bad policing!" without being punished themselves.
You're right about the contemporary views, though. Pauline Kael appears to be at the forefront of those types of views about these types of movies. I wish there was a Kael archive as comprehensive as Ebert's website.
Maybe "can't make this type of movie anymore" is just another way of saying that there are more people—not a majority yet, but more than in the '70s—that would view a movie like this (not even to mention movies that are way more overt with the copaganda) and feel uncomfortable. Maybe? I don't know. Maybe Puke on Your Birthday can be helpful in at least talking about it.
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