The French Connection - in historical context

It seems strange to read many posters complaints that this film is "boring" or questioning its point. It's almost like someone of my generation (b. 1959) asking what was the importance of World War I. For we who lived through the late 60's and 70's, THE FRENCH CONNECTION remains a cultural touchstone that defines the era. Who can forget the nightly news in 1971 leading off with the mounting death toll of the Vietnam War, followed by some inner city story about the war on drugs? The U.S. seemed to be losing both wars. And if you lived in New York City, like me, urban blight wasn't just a news story, you could drive in any direction and see it. The newspapers' end of the year edition always provided a roll call of the twenty or thirty police officers who were killed in the line of duty in the previous twelve months.

It was only a couple of weeks before THE FRENCH CONNECTION opened that the riot in Attica Prison occurred. Not much earlier that year, the particularly horrific murders of P.O. Waverly Jones and P.O. Joseph Piagentini, while they ate their lunch in their squad car in Harlem, dominated the news. The city homicide rate was over 2,500, and poised to increase in 1972. Then there was the heroin epidemic, and the crime that it fostered. This was society out of control. Nobody was safe.

That October, THE FRENCH CONNECTION opened with little if any fanfare. But in the weeks that followed, everybody was talking about it. Here was a film that showed how a big-city Narcotics squad operated. The only thing I knew about "narcs" was that one had arrested a high school student down the block from my house for carrying a bag of weed. The police portrayed on television were all cleaned up for "Dragnet" and "Adam-12." In the movies, the cops were slick fantasy characters like Dirty Harry and Bullitt. THE FRENCH CONNECION confirmed what many suspected, that the real cops were brutal, often racist, sometimes lawless. When Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso (the real "Popeye" and "Cloudy") appeared on The Merv Griffin Show and "60 Minutes," they were treated as heroes fighting the good fight. They were never questioned about the illegal tactics they used, some which were shown in the film, instead they were lauded for being tough guys holding the line on the front. When a real major heroin ring was smashed a week or so after the film opened, the news reports showed the police removing the drugs from hidden traps in the car, just like in the film.

The film got even more national attention when Nixon announced his national "war on drugs." In the Spring of 1972, my junior high school started a program of having policemen come into the classroom and talk about the dangers of drug use (accompanied by a slide show or short movie). It was inescapable, it was real and it was playing at your local cinema.

Of course, the film became a victim of its own success. Every ensuing urban thriller copied its gritty style until it became a cliche. Now it seems many modern viewers see the film as a relic, a historical footnote; so perhaps Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is the more enduring classic. However, I will never forget leaving the theater after seeing THE FRENCH CONNECTION in the summer of 1972, and getting on the subway to go back to my Queens home. I watched a junkie nod out on the seat across from me. It's like the movie didn't stop playing.