BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The French Connection" (1971)

Part of the reason I decided to do this Best Picture Showcase series of blogs was to finally do something I've been wanting to do for many years. I wanted to see all the films that won the top Oscar. For a while, I even considered owning them all, but I decided against that because there are some I just don't, or probably won't, like. Ultimately when my wife threw this blogging series idea at me late last year, the time seemed right. I estimated there were about half of the films that have won Best Picture that I've seen, and the other half I either saw only in part, or not at all, or perhaps saw some or all of but just can't remember. This film falls into that last category. I know I watched this on TV with my parents when I was young (and I'm sure it was edited because I remember there were commercials interrupting the film), but I was too young to either recall it well today, or moreso, too young to fully understand and appreciate it. All I knew then was that we had good guys chasing bad guys for 2 hours. To be honest, that pretty much is the best summation of the plot one could give for this movie. Good guys versus bad guys. Cops and robbers. Trust me though, it's anything but dull.

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Yep, that's Santa Claus up above in a state of facial undress chasing after somebody, and in that Santa Claus suit is hard-boiled detective "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) with his partner "Cloudy" Russo (Roy Scheider) going after a drug peddler who they just witnessed do a drug deal in a New York City bar. They eventually catch up with the suspect and kindasorta beat a confession out of him. Meanwhile, overseas in Marseilles, France, we see another undercover detective trailing a bearded man. This bearded man is Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey, who's actually a Spanish actor playing a French guy and there's a funny story I'll tell later as to why), and Charnier runs a huge international heroin-smuggling operation. The detective eventually heads to his home and is met with a sudden and violent end, as he's shot in his apartment foyer by one of Charnier's flunkies, Pierre Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi).

Nicoli meets up with Charnier at his luxurious home and lets him know the job's done. Now they can continue their plan, which is to smuggle heroin into the United States via a friend's international visit. That friend is television personality Henri Devereaux (Frédéric de Pasquale) and he's bringing his car with him via the boat trip he's taking to New York. The action then turns back to NYC. Doyle and Russo get some drinks at a club, and while doing so they see a young couple at a table with some known drug kingpins. The detectives decide to hang around and eventually tail the couple as they head home in a luxury car. They stake out the entire night and then follow them the next day to their business, which is nothing more than a small newsstand and restaurant.

The detectives wonder how this couple can drive fancy cars and party with drug bigwigs just owning this small restaurant. Well, upon some further digging, they learn all about the young couple, Sal and Angie Boca (Tony LoBianco, Arlene Farber). Both have criminal records. Doyle and Russo suspect this couple must be involved with something more. The probability of that increases when they learn that they live in the same apartment complex as Joel Weinstock (Harold Gary), a shady lawyer with connections to the drug trade. Also, Sal has a brother elsewhere in New York with a criminal record as well.

Charnier and Nicoli arrive in NYC. They head to an impound lot, where they have a hired guy bidding on a car in an auction. The plan is for that car to hold the money they get for the heroin they're smuggling in. While that's going on, Doyle and Russo bust into a bar full of African-Americans and pretty much somehow convince the entire group of people in there, which must be 30 or more, to face the wall with their hands behind their heads. Yeah, good luck having that kind of clout in 2014. Doyle and Russo sweep the place, collect a bunch of drug paraphernalia, arrest a few people, and boss everybody around. One guy in particular gets a smack from Doyle as they go back and forth with profanities, and Doyle tosses him into a restroom stall. They both then laugh. Turns out this guy is an informant for the detectives. The informant alerts Doyle that there is word of a major heroin supply coming from overseas.

Doyle and Russo plead with their supervisor Walt (Eddie Egan) that the Boca couple could have something to do with this arriving heroin, and they should wire the telephones at the Boca home and workplace. Walt reluctantly agrees, but also assigns two federal agents, Mulderig (Bill Hickman) and Klein (Sonny Grosso). Mulderig and Doyle have a lot of bad blood between them due to a past incident where a policeman was killed, and Mulderig blames Doyle for it due to his reckless demeanor. After several days of listening to the wiretaps, which often are nothing more than arguments between the couple about ordering pizza and whatnot (which entertains the detectives to no end), Doyle and Russo finally hear a cryptic conversation between Sal and a guy with a French accent. They think they've hit paydirt here, and based on what they heard, they find and begin to tail who they believe the smugglers could be.

Devereaux arrives in NYC with his car and goes about his business, having no idea his car is holding all those drugs. Meanwhile, Doyle and Russo walk all over the city tailing Charnier and Boca, who both begin to have a feeling they may be being watched. Joel Weinstock is meeting with Charnier, and a chemist friend tests a sample of the heroin. It's the best stuff he's ever seen and estimates a $32M payout for it. Boca wants to make the purchase immediately, but Weinstock tells him to be patient because right now, they're in all likelihood all being tailed and the phone lines are all tapped.

The next morning, Doyle follows around Charnier some more, who has no doubt he's being followed at this point. Doyle does his best to not be noticed, but Charnier somehow escapes out of sight while in a floral shop. Doyle does catch back up to him, but then nearly loses him going in and out of subway terminals. Finally, Charnier is able to get away by stepping on and off a subway train repeatedly until he is able to get back on and Doyle is not. Charnier gives a wry little wave from inside the train to Doyle on the platform as he escapes.

Doyle's supervisor, Walt, is ready to call the whole thing off, saying if a deal's going to have been done, it would have by now, because the shipment in question already arrived and there's no concrete link that's been established by Doyle to anyone or anything that was on the boat yet. Doyle wants to continue the hunt because he has a hunch. Mulderig says last time Doyle had a hunch, a cop wound up dead. This causes Doyle to go after Mulderig, and the two are separated before Walt tells Doyle he's off the case.

Nicoli offers to kill Doyle for Charnier, suggesting by the time another cop is assigned to trail them, they'll already be back home in France and can't be extradited. Charnier gives Nicoli the green light. After Doyle heads home that evening, he's greeted outside his apartment complex by gunshots from afar that hit a woman next to him. Doyle evades the rooftop sniper and chases him once he sees him fleeing. Nicoli boards a train, so Doyle commandeers a civilian's car and gives chase, following the train route. Nicoli shoots a cop on the train and hijacks the engineer's room so the train does not stop at the next station. Meanwhile, Doyle races and crashes the car throughout the city in what's some impressive choreography that is probably along with the scene from the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt among the most famous movie car chases in history.

The train engineer passes out, and the train's about to crash into another parked train at the end of line. Nicoli can't stop it, and the train crashes, throwing all the passengers into the aisle, and Nicoli face-first into a window. Doyle arrives at the stop and chases down Nicoli some more, eventually shooting him dead.

I'm assuming Doyle is put back on the case at this point, because that night he and Russo are staking out Devereaux's car. The car sits all night until some would-be thieves come upon it to strip its parts. The thieves are all arrested, and Doyle angrily just decides to have the car impounded so they can strip it down and find the drugs. At the shop, they absolutely tear the shit out of the car but don't find anything. Finally, they open the fender panels and find the heroin inside. Meanwhile, Devereaux has arrived at the impound lot wondering where his car is. He is stalled while the detectives and their buddies somehow put the car back together again before giving it to Devereaux, who in turn gives it to Charnier who has asked to borrow it.

Charnier heads off, followed by Doyle and Russo. It turns out Charnier is driving it to Wards Island, where Sal Boca's brother has an auto body shop. At the shop, they remove the drugs and make the transaction. Charnier and Sal wind up stopped at the bridge back to New York, however, as Doyle is there with a fleet of police vehicles. Doyle gives Charnier a wry little wave in receipt of the earlier one at the subway. The smugglers turn around and head back to the shop, where everyone hides out as Doyle and company arrive. Sal is shot dead by police, and detective Mulderig is accidentally shot dead by Doyle. Everyone else surrenders, except Charnier, who Doyle knows is hiding in this building somewhere. Doyle heads to another room and we hear a single gunshot.

And that's the end of the film.

No, seriously.

Well, actually, there's an epilogue. Doyle and Russo were reassigned. Devereaux spent 4 years in prison. Angela Boca did some jail time as well. And Charnier? He was never caught and was believed to be living in France.

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I admit, I felt a bit cheated when the film ended as ambiguously as it did, but the epilogue reminded me that this was based on actual events, so in that realm I understood why it finished that way on screen. The real Doyle and Russo were none other than Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, who portrayed supervisor Walt and federal detective Klein in this film. Oh, and the Fernando Rey story I alluded to earlier? Here's how he wound up cast as Alain Charnier. Director William Friedkin had asked his casting director, Robert Weiner, to get a Spanish actor (who's name he didn't know) that he'd seen in the 1967 French film Belle de Jour. That actor was Francisco Rabal. Somehow, Weiner instead contacted Rey and ultimately cast him to be in the film. The mistake was later realized and they DID contact Rabal, but then learned Rabal spoke only Spanish. So Rey was kept. For more fun, the producers screened the completed film and discovered Rey's French was horrible, so they had that redubbed. They did not, however, redub his English.

The French Connection scored 8 nominations at the 44th Annual Academy Awards, winning 5. Its Best Picture victory was over A Clockwork Orange, Fiddler on the Roof, The Last Picture Show and Nicholas and Alexandra. The other wins were for Director (Friedkin), Lead Actor (Hackman), Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Tidyman) and Film Editing (Gerald Greenberg). Roy Scheider was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost out to The Last Picture Show's Ben Johnson. A hard-nosed nailbiter of a film that performed very well at the box office, The French Connection is still a measuring stick for the "good guys vs. bad guys" films made today, and I'm not sure many, if any, have yet measured up.