The French Connection (1971)

William Friedkin's film The French Connection (1971) was not the first film to be shot on the streets of New York, nor was it the first realistic police drama to evoke those streets. Its success, however, assured that there would be a spate of such films over a period of years, and the style of the film influenced films and television shows for some time. The city of New York was featured in this film in an interesting way. The streets of New York had been the setting for films many times, though during the 1930 and 1940s those streets were usually simulated on a back lot in Hollywood. In 1948, that changed with the production of The Naked City, a film that was shot on the streets of New York and that made the city very much a character. The French Connection is a descendant of that earlier film. Both use similar techniques of cinema vTritT camerawork to capture the rhythms of the city, and both are based on true stories to take advantage of the verisimilitude achieved with out-of-studio filming. A major difference in attitude can be detected between the two eras in filmmaking, however, for The French Connection exists in an amoral world where telling friend from foe is much more difficult than telling the good guys from the bad guys in the New York of 1948. This new attitude reflects changes in the city itself as well as changes in American society at large and in the way filmmakers and other artists reacted to these social changes.

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not danger directed at anyone but a general sense of impending peril where a woman and her baby may have to dive for cover when a policeman like Popeye Doyle chases a fleeing suspect through the dense streets beneath the El, or when passengers on the subway may find themselves between the police and the criminal in a gunfight. The film is quite self-conscious about its evocation of New York as a dark and dangerous place as the filmmakers contrast New York City with Marseilles, where the French drug dealer lives. The two cities are very different aside from the differences in weather--Marseilles in winter is warm and bright while New York is cold and dark. The cities are light and dark respectively for quite different reasons--Marseilles has streets that are airy and bright, with average traffic moving between buildings that may be much older than those in New York but which seem more maintained. The streets of New York, on the other hand, especially in the more crime-ridden sections, are dark, with buildings darkened from car exhausts and soot, with graffiti on walls, with trash in empty lots and in the gutters of the streets, and with crowded subways and trains. The image of New York City portrayed in this film would become

Category: Film - T