Let me introduce Chris McGinley, a writer and reviewer whose work has appeared in
Shotgun Honey,
Out of the Gutter,
Near to the Knuckle, and Yellow Mama. We were jawing about one of my favorite films, William Friedkin's classic
The French Connection, and he had a lot to say. I thought it deserved a wider audience. --Thomas Pluck
Style and Formula in The French Connection
by Chris McGinley
Much has been written about the style and
mood of William Friedkin's The French
Connection (1971). Commentators are
fond of identifying influences ranging from Costa-Gavras' Z and the Maysles brothers work, to the more recently noted
Kartemquin documentaries of the 1960s.
There's been a great deal of talk about long takes, overlapping dialogue
and the film's "gritty" verite
style generally. What's so interesting
to me, however, is how the elements of cinematography and sound establish the
important formal elements of the police
procedural in The French Connection. The scenes unfold in a manner so completely
artful and seamless that we forget we're watching a Hollywood cop film. Indeed, what's unorthodox (and liberating)
about the film is not that it deviates significantly from the procedural
formula, but that the elements of formula are artfully hidden in its style.
The opening Marseilles scene, and the
shakedown at the Oasis bar that follows, establish some narrative basics common
to the procedural. So far, we know we're
in the gritty world of undercover narcs who will most likely encounter
something outside of their usual experience, something international, something
"big." None of this is
especially imaginative or atypical. But
the foot chase that follows the shakedown introduces a few elements unique to
the narrative. First, it initiates a
trope that works in tandem with the visual style of the film, pursuit. Yes, most
cop films involve pursuit of some sort, but pursuit in The French Connection represents something larger. In fact, for Popeye and Cloudy chase is the
heart of investigatory work. They walk,
run, drive, stake-out, ride subways, and generally tail their quarry. Such scenes occupy the bulk of the screen
time. There's precious little gun-play and virtually no tough guy talk in The French Connection. No suspect is ever braced or interviewed
formally. And when there is some
dialogue between cop and con, like at the close of the foot chase scene, the
film seems to make a point about its uselessness. (The "pick your feet in
Poughkeepsie" comment is to this day still an enigmatic remark, and the
cops get nothing important from the pusher they arrest.) But we are introduced to their singular metier: chase.
It's this element that drives the story,
again in some degree like many cop films, but in far greater quantity, and in a
manner that serves the stylistic innovation for which the film is so notable. As viewers, we never tire of the relentless
pursuit, nor do we lament the absence of any profiling, interrogation, cop
fraternity, or even the sex and romance common to so many procedurals of the
era. This is because the formal feature
of pursuit, the detective work at the heart of the film, operates in the service of the film's style, or
look. In the first twenty minutes alone,
Popeye and Cloudy follow Sal and Angie across locations in Times Square, the
Lower East Side, Little Italy, Brooklyn, and the Upper west Side. We get swept up not in the dialogue between
the cops--or in the commission of any actual crimes--but in the locales and in
the way they are presented to us, as naturalistic tableaus often filmed in hand
held shots. Actually, Doyle and Cloudy
say little to each other during this first twenty minutes. They simply follow. The locations, the neon lights, the grey
urban landscapes, and the cars and bridges together form a varied terrain that
shapes the aesthetic of the film and simultaneously serves the formal narrative
function of pursuit/detection.
Interestingly, neither Sal, Angie, nor
Joel Weinstock utters a single audible word by this point, nor have they
committed a crime. Rather, it's the
visual tableau, the film's much-noted "verite"
aesthetic, that propels the narrative, not a criminal backstory or a crime
witnessed by cops, or even a credible lead.
Initially, the cops' boss, Simonson, tells them that they "couldn't
bust a three time loser" with the weak evidence they have on Sal or
Weinstock. And though the first chase
ends in a most uneventful moment that would seem to support his assertion, Sal
and Angie stuffing the newspapers they sell into the front sections, the cops
know that the tail has paid off. It's led
to the Weinstock connection.
The varied landscapes of the film
through which the constant chase is conducted, brilliantly shot in their
natural dreariness by cinematographer Owen Roizman, should also be understood
as a formal narrative element relating to the cops' ability to pursue the criminals.
Until now, the detectives have been confined to Brooklyn, in fact to
Bedford-Stuyvesant, and so they must lobby Chief Simonson for a detachment in
order to make a plea for the case. But Simonson
is reluctant to allow the cops to go beyond their district, and he supports his
logic through chastising the cops who bring in only small time hoods and
dealers, though he concedes that they lead the department in arrests year after
year. At the risk of over-reaching here,
I propose that the expanded geographical jurisdiction, which the Chief wisely
approves in the end, serves the narrative demands of the film as much as it
does the work of Popeye and Cloudy. The
cops need to follow the chase wherever
it takes them. It's what they do:
chase. And it's the chase itself that shapes
the film's distinctive aesthetic--the under-lit interiors and the sunless and
frigid exteriors of the many locations across the city, sites that take the
cops well beyond their usual beat, to places both above and below ground.
It's also clear early on that that
non-diegetic sound is crucial to the formal elements of the procedural in The French Connection. Again, the cops don't do a whole lot of talking. Their continued pursuit of Sal, Charnier, and
Weinstock is characterized by a conspicuous lack
of dialogue, in fact. But it's the score by avant-garde jazz composer Don Ellis
that aids in creating both the tension and movement necessary to narrative
development. It all begins at The Chez,
where Popeye and Cloudy go for a drink on the night they arrest the
pusher. Here again the formal elements
of the genre, in this instance a hunch that leads to a chase, are presented
without much dialogue. Popeye tells Cloudy
he recognizes "at least two junk connections" at Sal's table. But as he locks onto his quarry, the diegetic
music of the Three Degrees' "Everybody's Going to the Moon" fades out
and Ellis' high pitched, electronic dissonance rises. We watch people talk at Sal's table, but we only
see their mouths move. This technique is
repeated in the scene where Popeye keeps tabs on Charnier while he dines at Le
Copain, and in places elsewhere where neither the viewer nor the cops are privy
to an important conversation.
Instead, it's Ellis' atonal score that
heightens the tension in so many of these scenes, creating a narrative momentum
where it wouldn't exist otherwise. For
example, consider again the scene in which the cops first follow Sal and Angie. On the
surface, it's little more than a slow speed tail scene around town. Nothing substantive really happens, and all the cops see is a
possible "drop" in Little Italy and a car switch. At one point, Cloudy nearly falls
asleep. But Ellis' baleful brass notes
and discordant passages are used to enliven the scene, to give it tension and
motion. There's a kinetic feel to it
that belies the slow speed nature of the "chase." I won't discuss in detail the several other
scenes in which the score heightens the action and supports the element of
pursuit, but it happens throughout the long tail of Charnier and company around
town, in the stakeout of the drug car, in the Ward Island scenes, and in other
places.
It's true that there are a few stock
elements of the Hollywood procedural in places, but they seem perfunctory and cliché
(almost bogus by design), and it's not at all clear how they function formally
in the film. Simonson plays the role of
the combustible chief at odds with the detectives in two separate scenes, the
second of which seems entirely unnecessary.
He removes the cops from special assignment, but there are no
repercussions to follow. Popeye is
immediately targeted by the sniper and the case simply resumes without further
comment from the Chief. (The cops never
go "rogue," as it were.) Cloudy
performs some clever detection in places, like in the scene where Devereaux's
car is examined. But such elements are
rare. No, the film constructs its formal
genre elements principally through its style, not through dialogue or the conventions
of the procedural like interviews, profiling, tough-guy talk, or even violence
(of which there is comparatively little).
Together, Ellis' avant-garde score and
Roizman's changing landscapes, themselves a sort of kinesthesis created through
editing, propel the narrative action in a way few other films have ever
done. Simply put, this is why The French Connection is so important to
the Hollywood police procedural. Its
formal elements are embodied in large part through its style, something so
rarely seen either before or since.
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