The dread-infused music by Don Ellis that opens Friedkin\u2019s cop classic\u2014horn notes blasted rather than played, sounding less like trumpets than sirens\u2014immediately creates a sense of chaos and terror that permeates all that follows. The movie is similarly impatient; the opening credits barely take time to list the key personnel before we\u2019re tossed into a sting in progress, with Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman, in an Oscar-winning performance) incognito in a Santa suit, joining his partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) in breathless pursuit of their subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe French Connection <\/em>marks one of the most ambitious movie projects ever to be filmed in New York City,\u201d boasted the press notes. \u201cEighty-six separate locations throughout the city were utilized, covering Gotham scenically as it has rarely been before in a feature film.\u201d Friedkin and producer Philip D\u2019Antoni coordinated principal photography between December 1970 and February 1971, because, per D\u2019Antoni, \u201cthe winter was when the actual events occurred.\u201d Scenes were shot in Grand Central Station, in Central Park, on Madison Avenue, and on the Lower East Side in Manhattan; in Maspeth and at LaGuardia in Queens; in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Coney Island in Brooklyn; and even at Ward\u2019s Island in the Upper East River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The precedent set by D\u2019Antoni\u2019s earlier Bullitt <\/em>was part of the reason the French Connection<\/em>\u2019s iconic chase existed at all; it wasn\u2019t part of the original police case, or Moore\u2019s book. \u201cI felt challenged to do another kind of chase,\u201d Friedkin wrote, \u201cone which, while it might remind people of Bullitt<\/em>, would not be essentially similar.\u201d The key difference was vehicular: Bullitt <\/em>was a car chasing a car, but The French Connection <\/em>was a car chasing an elevated subway train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This meant the production had to not only coordinate, as usual, with the mayor\u2019s office, but with the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority. After some wrangling over the accuracy of the details of the sequence, the MTA granted the production permission to shoot on the Stillwell Avenue line in Brooklyn. Friedkin and his team marked off an ideal stretch from Bay 50th Street to 60th Street, and worked through a plan to shoot the sequence in two chunks (one for the train and one for the car) in bits and pieces over a five-week period\u2014and only between ten a.m. and three p.m., between the line\u2019s rush hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To shoot Hackman (and his stunt double, Bill Hickman) driving under the track, Friedkin and cinematographer Owen Roizman mounted three cameras on and inside the car, and used three simultaneous cameras when shooting from the street. \u201cBecause we were using real pedestrians and traffic at all times, it was impossible to undercrank, so everything was shot at normal speed,\u201d Friedkin wrote. \u201cIn most shots, the car was going at speeds between 70 and 90 miles an hour. . . . We prayed a lot, and kept our fingers crossed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The danger of New York City, the noisiness and chaos and disorder that Friedkin so adroitly transformed into tension, could also be cranked by less-graceful talents, with less finesse, into a kind of urban exploitation. Friedkin called it \u201ca crude poem to the city,\u201d but historian James Sanders puts a finer point on it. \u201cWhere the police once helped maintain a healthy civic order, now that very order is seen as diseased,\u201d he writes. \u201cOrdinary urban life, according to The French Connection<\/em>, is a nightmare.\u201d ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/french-connection2-1-1024x576.jpg\")
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