1971 must have been an interesting year. Well, so was 1939. But this film came the same year as another cop movie, Dirty Harry. It was also the year The Anderson Tapes got released - one of my favourite Sidney Lumet movie. I am sure that I am never wrong when I say late sixties and the early seventies have been the best period in ground-breaking films from Hollywood and The French Connection is one of the ripest of the lot.

Much of the credit for the movie is usually given to the director William Friedkin. He, like John Frankenheimer (directed the sequel), started off in TV. He later directed The Exorcist, another ground breaking film, especially reviving the horror genre which was flourishing in the B-grade wave. He made Cruising, a Pacino starer and stinker, and it had been downhill ever since. Looking at the brilliant film-making so evident in The French Connection, I still wonder what had happened to him. Read the book Easy Riders Raging Bulls, and it will tell you about dopes, sex, self-indulgence, egocentricity and arrogance pitting the downfall of many a good directors. But creativity does not die easy. Questions and questions...

Kudos also to Gene Hackman and the rest of the cast of the movie. Hackman, was of course, given an Oscar for the superb performance as hardboiled, racist cop Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle. He relentlessly pursues a suspected French Drug baron and there are several chase scenes which proves just that. Relentless, untiring, and persistence to the point that it gets to Doyle's head. The scene where he and his partner, Russo, played by Roy Schneider listens to wiretap as if listening to a favourite radio program is both hilarious and eerie - knowing how much they live the chosen career.

The cinematography is aptly documentary-like, or known as cinema verite. I read elsewhere that some of the shots of the streets were 'stolen' - that is shot from a van, therefore exposing unsuspecting pedestrians and street scenes. Even part of the famous car chase scene under the subway was real, including the scene where Doyle almost hit a pedestrian. The whole car chase thing is said to be inspired from a European movie called 'Z', and I don't give a damn. I saw it here and in Bullit first, and so be it. Especially so, now that both films are named whenever car chase sequences are mentioned.

Like most of the important films that came during that period, this film stands test of time. I would attribute that to the perfect combination of performance, technique and wonderful direction from Friedkin. It had to do a lot with honesty. It sticks to its mission, like the cops in it, and does not waver around dismissing audiences' attention, something Friedkin indulged in in Cruising. Watching the film, the expression "They don't make like 'em no more" comes to my mind.