French Connection II.

Review #2490: French Connection II.

Cast: 

Gene Hackman (NYPD Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle), Fernando Rey (Alain "Frog One" Charnier), Bernard Fresson (Inspector Henri Barthélémy), Philippe Léotard (Jacques), Ed Lauter (General William Brian), Charles Millot (Miletto), Jean-Pierre Castaldi (Raoul Diron), Cathleen Nesbitt (Old Lady), and André Penvern (André) Directed by John Frankenheimer (#559 - Grand Prix, #985 - The Manchurian Candidate)

Review:

"I like the script, I like the characters, I like the Hackman character in France and not speaking a word of French. It's a very difficult film because we want in no way to rip off the first one, which is one of the best films I've ever seen. I want to make a movie that stands on its own as a movie"

Sure, why not do a sequel to The French Connection (1971)? To reiterate, the film took influence in atmosphere and style from films such as Le Samouraï (1967) and Z (1969). You probably remember that the film had a handful of characters based on real-life people in terms of distribution of heroin, which was turned into books such, as, well, The French Connection in 1969 (as written by Robin Moore) that detailed Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso trying to figure out the drug ring (oddly enough, there was another film based on the exploits of Egan in Badge 373 [1973], with Robert Duvall as the star). One of those people was based on Jean Jehan, who really never did get extradited from France and apparently did die peacefully in old age. But hey, screw reality, right? Sometimes you really want to make some money and sometimes audiences will want to watch a sequel that gives you more of what you think you want, so screw it, French Connection II, complete with only Hackman and Rey returning from the first film. Friedkin had no interest in doing the second film and apparently never watched it. The story was written by Robert and Laurie Dillon, who worked on the screenplay with Alexander Jacobs (in his penultimate film credit as a writer), although apparently Pete Hamill provided an uncredited remake for nearly all of the dialogue shortly before production started (apparently Hackman had "nothing to act" with the lack of Roy Scheider in the cast*). John Frankenheimer signed on to direct the movie because he wanted to do a movie that audiences would see. Made on a budget of over $4 million, the movie made nearly three times its budget back (for comparison, the first film made over $70 million).

Admittedly, a movie that features the lead character getting addicted to heroin - he gets kidnapped about 40 minutes into the film, gets injected with heroin not long after, gets dumped back to the cops and eventually gets through the cold turkey treatment by about the 80-minute mark so he can torch a place (and call the cops and no I'm not joking about any of that). It surely is a curious one. Doyle isn't nearly as abrasive as he was in the first film because this time around, he spends more time trying to understand (miserably) the French people around him in one of those "fish out of water" scenarios. Hackman was appreciative for the role of Doyle but he also went on record for stating he never actually re-watched the first film after 1971. He is still pretty offbeat and still pretty entertaining in that certain type of gritty rage that could only come from someone like Hackman. He just has the knack in making a guy like Doyle seem more than just a blowhard or one that could vanish into thin air in the action. Fresson makes for a quality counterpart in capturing the restrained nature of authority that probably fares best in the sequences when having to confront Hackman trying to go cold turkey. Rey is the same type of elusive presence as before, mainly because he doesn't really have to do much besides slide in and slide out of the background that is mostly convincing in nebulous drug dealing*. Regardless of its fictional nature in following up such a hard-nosed first film, there is a worthy sense of danger and entertainment that comes through for engagement that at least makes you care about most of the 119-minute runtime, even with the amusement that arises in straight up fading to black right after the pivotal moment of the whole thing. You get a nice foot chase and even a burning building sequence to see havoc, some sequels don't even try to give you that even when they aspire to top the original. As a whole, French Connection II doesn't do anything particularly great when compared to the long shadow cast by the first film, but it is a solid enough film in its general execution of thrills to go along with enough from Hackman and company to make the trip at least seem like one worth going through once. 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*Hackman and Rey had interesting paths to being cast in the first film, by the way. Rey was cast because Friedkin had wanted the small performance of a Spanish actor that had been in Belle de Jour (1967)...which was Francisco Rabal. Hackman on the other hand came about because they couldn't get the people Hackman or the studio envisioned for Doyle: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Peter Boyle, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, James Caan, Robert Mitchum, Rod Taylor, and...Jimmy Breslin!

*Hey, fuck drugs. Sure, you can try weed, but in general, well, fuck heroin. Hell, cigarettes give you cancer, fuck them too. Don't even get me started on alcohol or vaping.

Viridiana.

Review #2075: Viridiana.

Cast: 

Silvia Pinal (Viridiana), Francisco Rabal (Jorge), Fernando Rey (Don Jaime), José Calvo (Don Amalio), Margarita Lozano (Ramona), José Manuel Martín (El Cojo), Victoria Zinny (Lucia), Luis Heredia (Manuel 'El Poca'), Joaquín Roa (Don Zequiel - a beggar), Lola Gaos (Enedina), María Isbert (Beggar), Teresa Rabal (Rita) Directed by Luis Buñuel (#1383 - Él, #1723 - Los Olvidados, and #1884 - L'Age d'Or)

Review: 

“I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am.”

 

The time had come at last for Luis Buñuel to return home to Spain, or at least return to a greater prominence. Well, if that's the way one wants to put it, anyways, because he was never really gone besides making a steady living ever since he left his native country for good once the nationalist forces led by Francisco Franco had fully taken control of the country (Buñuel of course had been busy during the Spanish Civil War as a coordinator of film propaganda for the Republic); Land Without Bread (1933), termed a "pseudo-documentary" and made in Spain, was his last film for over a decade. Gran Casino (1947) wasn't a great success with Mexican audiences, but it was the first of numerous features Buñuel made in Mexico, which would include varying levels of notability from Los Olvidados (1950) to Robinson Crusoe (1954; shot in Mexico in both English and Spanish). Cela s'appelle l'aurore (1956) saw him return to France for a time that resulted in two further productions. Interestingly, the film made right before Viridiana was The Young One (1960), an English-language production made in Mexico. Anyway, back to Viridiana, which Buñuel co-wrote with Julio Alejandro as a loose adaptation of the 1895 novel Halma by Benito Pérez Galdós; in 1959, they had adapted Galdos' Nazarin. The film received interest within festivals but was also called "blasphemous" by the Vatican and was banned in its native Spain for over a decade. At any rate, Buñuel made a variety of films wherever he could in either Mexico, Spain (he returned to direct Tristana in 1970) or elsewhere until his death in 1983 at the age of 83. 

Oddly enough, the ending of the film attracted more attention to it because of what ended up on screen rather than what wasn't seen. When checked for censorship, the ending was one key aspect that needed to be changed from what depicted a character deciding to open a door and close it right behind them...which, well, is certainly different when you consider the actual ending involves characters shuffling cards together. Even knowing that wouldn't prepare you for a film absorbed in vigor and satire for charity in the pious sense. It does not take too long to turn into a show for the macabre within its expressions of desire and a climax that involves, well, a supper that will surely remind folks of what happens when you shine a light on human desires and the imagery that comes with such grotesque nature, such as a crucifix that has a knife in it. The march for spiritualistic charity with the grace of God can only see a clash with the reality that comes in a materialistic world that cannot hide its foundation within the thin face of moral high ground. 90 minutes is more than enough to the indulgences of Buñuel in making a human comedy (whether one is religious or not) that shows futility with such damning effectiveness that asks just what the differences are between those little acts of charity and actual change. With all that in mind, the performances reflect well among the divide of beggars and choosers, as evidenced by the performance by Pinal that reflects upon the loss of one's innocence. She is thrust into a place of brutal honesty when dealing with the company of men that are reflected mostly within Rabal and Rey (the latter is mostly present for the first third of the feature), who each show the inner workings of who they are within how they treat the mansion each inhabit in their time. Calvo represents one of the numerous beggars that come to inhabit the rest of the film, whether that involves men of no sight in themselves (or souls), sores, or people with children to feed. By the time one sees a supper of the grotesque, it is a culmination of such dark amusement to find in the illusions of charity versus human nature. The cynic may not always be right, but one thing that is for certain is that there is no one true way to reaching a person in heart or health; buying a dog off a cart is one thing, not seeing as dog I a cart going the other way is another. In the end, after seeing people for who they are when it comes to giving and taking, one has to make their own path rather than let it fall into the hands of whatever dogma seems to be the right choice. With Buñuel at the helm, you know you are in for a mischievous display to see, and this film handles the task of dark human comedy handily.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

Next up: South Korea sees a remake...in color.

The French Connection.

Review #1438: The French Connection.

Cast: 
Gene Hackman (Det. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle), Fernando Rey (Alain "Frog One" Charnier), Roy Scheider (Det. Buddy "Cloudy" Russo), Tony Lo Bianco (Salvatore "Sal" Boca), Marcel Bozzuffi (Pierre Nicoli), Frédéric de Pasquale (Henri Devereaux), and Bill Hickman (Bill Mulderig) Directed by William Friedkin (#037 - The Exorcist)

Review: 
"If you're going to make a film or an album of music or a painting, you cannot afford to stop and think what other people will think of it. You've got to take into consideration what your editor thinks, if, say, you're a writer. But I don't have anyone to answer to. I make a film because I want to. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes they're not, but the way I think about my films is always very personal." - William Friedkin

"Acting was something I wanted to do since I was 10 and saw my first movie, I was so captured by the action guys. Jimmy Cagney was my favorite. Without realizing it, I could see he had tremendous timing and vitality." - Gene Hackman

All decades could be studied for their grittiness, but perhaps no decade had it more interesting than the 1970s. After a decade of shifting in Hollywood and within the culture, it only figures that some of the best films from this era would be ones with tinges of moral ambiguity and raw disenchantment of the angry young man, where law and order was a catchphrase rather than a show. Accordingly, it should only make sense that the first R-rated film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture would be The French Connection, based on the non-fiction book by Robin Moore released two years prior. Produced by 20th Century Fox, it featured the pursuit by two detectives (inspired by actual detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, who both served as technical advisors in the film) of the New York Police Department of a substance smuggler in New York City. It should prove fitting that such a frank and urgent film came from a director with humble backgrounds in William Friedkin. The Chicago native was the son of a salesman and nurse that grew into becoming interested in films in his teenage years, viewing films such as Les Diaboliques, Psycho, and Citizen Kane (the last being the one to cement his love for the cinema). He went from working in the WGN-TV mail room to directing live TV shows and documentaries when he was 18, starting with The People vs. Paul Crump (1962). Incidentally, one documentary that Friedkin directed was The Thin Blue Line (1966), which focused on the police force and problems of combating increased crime. He started his feature film career with Good Times (1967), which featured Sonny and Cher in a comedy musical western. Of his first four films, only The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) proved any success with audiences or critics. And yet here he is, directing a film under the production of Philip D'Antoni, who had previously produced Bullitt (1968) for Fox only after several rejections and a small budget of $1.8 million dollars. There were a few follow-ups to this film of sorts. The Seven-Ups (1973) was directed by D'Antoni  while having Scheider as the main star as a tough-guy cop with Grosso as technical advisor and Bill Hickman back as stunt coordinator. French Connection II (1975) was a fictional sequel directed by John Frankenheimer that had Hackman and Rey return to their roles that was a mild success.

Of all the unlikely things, Hackman not being the first, second or even third choice must rank high up the list. Famed newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin was actually in the running at one point in time (he would lose out in light of his inability to drive), while Jackie Gleason was thought to be bad for box office with the failure of Gigot (1962), and Peter Boyle disapproved of the violent themes. Hackman, who was known for supporting roles such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and I Never Sang for My Father (1970) after going from the Pasadena Playhouse to doorman-between-acting, was found at the last moment. Similarly, Scheider had just a few small roles to his credit before this film (along with Klute) helped rise him to stardom. To have the actors get a feel for the cops they would portray, they patrolled with Egan and Grosso for a month. One can see that this proved effective in making for tremendous performances from Hackman and Scheider in how grizzled and hard-edged they prove for a film that serves as a key point for police procedural films for its era. Hackman proves especially great in showing the maniacal drive and act that one seems to need to have to be on the beat to take a criminal down on and off the clock with intensity, while Scheider follows along with measured conviction; probably the best sequence with the two is their first, with them chasing a criminal down the street that turns into questioning with offbeat fervor from Hackman ("Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?") in a Santa suit. Rey (who came into international status with collaborations with Orson Welles and Luis Bunuel films in the 1960s and 1970s) is elegantly devious to fit this cat-and-mouse game of cops and drug kingpins without trouble. Boca and the others (including Egan and Grosso in brief roles) fill in the gritted atmosphere of thrills and action fitting to be talked about as a neo noir. Perhaps having Shaft writer Ernest Tidyman behind this screenplay helps in making this 104-minute film really tick with tension and competence. It might seem quaint to the eyes of those who have encountered plenty of procedurals in the near half century since release, but one has to start somewhere with grimy gripping films like this. The chase sequence (which had a mix of Hackman and stunt driver Hickman driving) is excellent to see play out in real traffic between a car and a train with careful angles and a poster-worthy showdown moment to boot. By the time it gets to its bittersweet finale, one knows they have watched an interesting film with plenty of looks and sounds of New York City from an era long ago with documentary-style filming from Friedkin that serves the film well in driving one up the wall and never letting things go too easily. As a whole, This is a film with a controlled obsession of sordid realism that makes for a classic of the age that had people like Hackman and Friedkin deservingly reap the rewards of for the rest of the era.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.