After watching Hoosiers, I unintentionally dove into a Gene Hackman retrospective. That led me to The French Connection, William Friedkin’s gritty thriller that predates his work on The Exorcist.
What struck me most wasn’t the car chases (though they’re as intense as legend suggests), but a quiet, brilliant sequence on a subway platform – a tense game of cat and mouse between cop and suspect that relies entirely on body language, suspicion, and timing. The film captures a pre-digital world of investigation: long hours of surveillance, tailing suspects through the city with no radio backup or GPS, just instinct and determination.
It’s a lean, street-level thriller, and the avant-garde jazz score gives it an unpredictable, edgy momentum — a sound that still feels bold even today.
Footnote: the movie starts in Marseille, and at one point, we see the giant Pan Am sign on the building of the same name in the background. Marseille… Panam… Funny, right?
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