The following notes on French Connection II were written by Josh Martin, PhD student in the Department of Communication Arts. French Connection II screened at the Cinematheque on Wednesday, July 2.
By Josh Martin
In 1971, William Friedkin’s The French Connection was an enormous sensation, emerging as the rare film to earn financial success, critical plaudits, and a truckload of awards, winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards and earning Gene Hackman his first Oscar for his turn as the morally unscrupulous NYPD detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle. Today, the film remains a seminal crime thriller, one of the essential films of that fertile, invigorating moment for American cinema in the early 1970s. Four years later, Hackman returned to the role in French Connection II (1975), which saw The Manchurian Candidate (1962) director John Frankenheimer taking the reins for a sequel set in the French city of Marseille. In an interview with Forbes upon the 50th anniversary of The French Connection in 2021, the late Friedkin reflected on his film and its successor, a picture that he believed had no reason to exist. “Before [Frankenheimer] did the film, I sent him an eight-page handwritten letter… urging him not to do it,” Friedkin recalled, describing this particular continuation as something he “would never do.” “Critics would see The French Connection as a classic and a masterpiece” when faced with a new installment, Friedkin insisted, describing the sequel as an “interloper” that “just capitalized on the title.”
Though Friedkin likely held a certain amount of protectiveness over his legendary thriller, it is hard to imagine that the director was alone in his skepticism: The French Connection isn’t exactly a film screaming out for a sequel. For his part, Frankenheimer described his attachment to the picture as a crucial turning point in his career, motivated by a string of flops that put his Hollywood viability in jeopardy. “I realized that unless Connection II were good,” Frankenheimer noted to interviewer Gary Engle in 1977, “I was probably out of the movie business. It was really that simple. Out!” The pressure of this make-or-break moment didn’t faze Frankenheimer, who “worked like hell” on the film for 20th Century Fox and used its relative success as a springboard to another stretch of mainstream work.
To Friedkin’s credit, when he claimed that French Connection II was “something, but it was not a sequel to the first film,” his proclamation holds a kernel of truth. In the hands of the skilled Frankenheimer and writers Alexander Jacobs and Robert and Laurie Dillon, French Connection II is a different beast altogether, somewhat radical and thrillingly ambitious in its departures from its predecessor. The film follows Popeye as he moves from New York City to Europe in pursuit of Charnier (frequent Buñuel collaborator Fernando Rey, also reprising his role from the 1971 thriller), the heroin dealer who eluded him stateside.
Despite the similarity in premise and genre, the sequel’s geographical shift places Popeye in more vulnerable situations. In New York, Popeye lords over his domain, a figure of chaos and vicious prejudice who nonetheless remains agential, always driving his own destiny forward – even if that drive comes with little concern for ethics or consequences. In the sequel, Hackman retains Popeye’s unique vulgarity and frightening charisma, but he encounters a clash of cultures and new colleagues desperate to keep him contained. The Marseille police, particularly Popeye’s assigned partner and watchdog Henri Barthélémy (Bernard Fresson), don’t care much for Popeye’s methods, skeptical of the destruction, madness, and dead policemen often found in his wake. The cops have done their homework on Popeye, and the results disturb them. Hamstrung by his European law enforcement compatriots, Popeye can only respond with smarmy disdain at these restrictions, annoyed by the need to play by the book.
As such, Popeye is forced into the role of the boorish American in this foreign milieu, cluelessly wandering through the French ports. His inability to speak a lick of French means that his violent commandeering of situations often generates befuddled stares from the city’s inhabitants. His flirtations with women are hapless; it takes him several minutes to even order a drink at a bar. As Popeye peruses the streets of Marseille in a bright Hawaiian shirt, failing to get any closer to Charnier, French Connection II almost takes on a lightly comic tone.
Such a tonal shift was controversial upon the film’s initial release. Roger Ebert wrote an ultimately mixed review of the sequel, but he especially lamented the humorous approach to Popeye, decrying that a character “whose competence, whose ability to function at a gut level” was “used for comic relief and stripped of his dignity” in Frankenheimer’s film. “It’s not Popeye’s city,” Ebert writes, noting the character’s “presence” and “capacity to explode” in New York, traits now absent in the sequel. Yet what Ebert views as a shortcoming can more charitably be seen as the film’s most pointed and subversive asset. Rather than giving viewers more of the same, Frankenheimer demonstrates a willingness to challenge Popeye’s power through the narrative, to gently mock his megalomaniacal instincts and place him in situations far out of his control.
However, considering how rapidly Frankenheimer enters more shocking territory when Charnier kidnaps Popeye, the unexpected levity is only one small piece of a bigger puzzle. Containing the detective to an unknown location, the kingpin forcibly injects Popeye with heroin for several weeks, hooking him. For long stretches in the film’s middle he is covered in injection marks, begging for another dose. After being rescued by Barthélémy, Popeye is a tornado of pure rage, suffering from withdrawal and excruciating pain. Yet even in these disturbing moments, Frankenheimer plays with tone and character, allowing Popeye and Barthélémy to bond and banter as the former struggles to get back on his feet.
Popeye eventually returns to action, chasing Charnier through the streets and docks of Marseille in the film’s climax. These scenes are filmed with innovative skillfulness by Frankenheimer: throughout the chase, he often cuts to a jarring inside point-of-view shot, linking the viewer with the intense adrenaline rush of Popeye’s frantic movements. While the specifics shall remain unspoiled, the film culminates with a shot that feels like an exclamation point, a punchy salvo in keeping with a vengeful Popeye pushed to his limits. In a different world, the terse punctuation of this shot would have been lessened: Frankenheimer tinkered with an expository textual coda, eventually deeming it “unsatisfactory” after test screenings. Disaster was wisely averted through that omission: the director’s ultimate conclusion remains a bold choice for a bold sequel, a fitting finale for a film unafraid to take risks and undercut the viewer’s expectations right to the bitter, brutal end.