‘The French Connection’: The movie Gene Hackman said nobody else could have made
On the set of 1975’s The French Connection, Gene Hackman was pushed past his breaking point. In the film, Hackman, who by all accounts despised authority, racism and brutality, played the hateful and cynical cop, Popeye Doyle. This would prove to be his breakout role. At the time, though, far removed from the film’s cultural impact and status as a classic, Hackman found this to be a particularly difficult role to play.
Throwing around slurs, beating suspects – it just wasn’t him. Director William Friedkin knew that he would have to make the actor angry enough that he would be able to access the character’s most deplorable traits. He had to coax it out of him with casual cruelty. For example, in lieu of saying ‘cut’, Friedkin recalls in an interview with Christopher McQuarrie, he would exclaim, “Oh, Jesus Christ!” followed up with some variation of “Pal, you’d better get a day job.”
Reportedly, Hackman was about to quit working on the movie on just the second day of shooting, but his agent convinced him to stay. Despite the fact that the film was a particularly difficult and different experience for the actor, today he has only good things to say about the picture, which went on to bag him his Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’. Even predating this, he regarded the film and its director as worthy of recognition. During a 1971 interview with Roger Ebert, he was asked about the film’s award chances.
“Well, if anything keeps The French Connection back from a series of nominations, there isn’t any justice,” he said. “I’m not talking just about myself. I’d like to see Billy Friedkin get some recognition as the year’s best director. Nobody else could have made this picture.”
The grimy war on drugs era police procedural is shot down and dirty on the streets of New York, with loose, documentary-style camera work – as if “the camera doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.”
It moves at a breakneck pace, with an edit that anticipates its own moments of brutality. “I learned a lot about movies just knowing what Billy left out in the editing stage. He left out all kinds of character development scenes in order to get on with the action,” continues Hackman. “Yet there are enough scenes left to make the characters work. Another director might have left everything in and ruined the pace of the picture.”
The film went on to find great success, launching the careers of Hackman and Friedkin. For the sequel, Hackman returned, whilst Friedkin did not. While the picture found moderate success under the direction of The Manchurian Candidate’s John Frankenheimer, it was noted as not embodying what made the original film so special. Audiences, while lauding Hackman’s work, were dismayed by a more “cartoonish” Popeye in a film that prioritised action sequences over complexity.
The French Connection is a testament to the power of collaboration. Sometimes, two creatives just get together at the right place at the right time to make something special.
