“French Connection II” - John Frankenheimer (1975)

French Connection II (1975) is an American action-adventure film that was a followup to The French Connection (1971).  That earlier film was a huge commercial success and won US Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Director (William Friedkin), Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Though the sequel under discussion here, French Connection II, was also commercially successful, the overwhelming majority of viewers preferred  the first film.  But not me – I think French Connection II is the superior film. Admittedly, The French Connection was polished, entertaining, and had non-stop audiovisual  pyrotechnics, but it didn’t quite match some of the sublime passages of French Connection II. And, overall, even though The French Connection had a fascinatingly gritty surface, it lacked the existential delirium of its successor [1].

Both films feature an epic battle between New York Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (played by Gene Hackman) and the wealthy French drug kingpin Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), but they have different settings and, aside from Hackman and Rey, different casts.  The contrast between these two antagonists, particularly in French Connection II,  is striking: Charnier is upper-class, polished, and seems to have unlimited resources: while Doyle is lower-class, socially clumsy, and usually acts alone. The earlier film is primarily set in New York City, while French Connection II is set in Marseilles.  The viewer of the sequel does not really need to know anything about the earlier film.  The main thing is that Charnier got away at the end of that earlier story, and Popeye Doyle is still after him.

The story of French Connection II is divided into three almost equal-lengthed acts.  In fact these three acts are so distinct that they seem like three separate stories.  The real payoff comes in the last act; but, still, your appreciation of that last act has been setup by what has come earlier.

1.  Popeye Arrives in Marseilles

Detective Popeye Doyle, with his signature pork pie hat, arrives at the Marseilles police yard (“Hotel de Police Services Generaux”) and introduces himself to French Inspector Henri Barthélémy (Bernard Fresson), to whom he has been assigned to work under in order to hunt down drug mastermind Alain Charnier.  This first act is devoted to highlighting just how much Doyle is a fish out of water and how difficult it will be for him to make headway in this foreign setting.  Although Doyle is presumably a hardened professional concerning police activities, he seems naive and socially insecure on the interpersonal level.  Perhaps to compensate for his self-perceived limitations, he is aggressively rude and vulgar to anyone who doesn’t immediately accommodate him.  On top of that, he seems to have a slew of despicable racial and cultural prejudices.  Nevertheless, as the story proceeds, Doyle’s vulnerabilities and predominant genuineness draw the viewer as an existential passenger aboard Doyle’s tumultuous experiential train. Despite whatever misgivings we may have about Doyle’s character, we are empathetically drawn into Doyle’s world, despite ourselves, and this is what makes the entire story compelling.  Credit for this more alluring psychological ambience present in French Connection II, must probably be given to two key production figures who were not part of The French Connection – director John Frankenheimer and cinematographer Claude Renoir, who was the grandson of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and a nephew of Jean Renoir.

These early sequences of Popeye are intercut with some scenes showing an ocean liner in dry dock at the Marseille port.  An adjutant of Alain Charnier, Jacques (Philippe Léotard), watches the liner intently, and he later furtively passes a money bag to a Japanese ship officer associated with the liner.  Clearly these people are part of the drug operation that Doyle seeks to foil. 

To show the magnitude of just what the lone and alienated Doyle is up against, we soon see Charnier amiably discussing his operations with an American, who turns out to be a high-ranking US military officer.  So even important people inside the US military are part of Charnier’s criminal syndicate.

Also in this act, the contrast between Popeye Doyle and Inspector Henri Barthélémy as police operatives is highlighted.  While Barthélémy emphasizes due process, Doyle is reckless and risks human lives to capture a suspect.  This is shown in one scene of a police drug raid in which Doyle’s rash pursuit of someone fleeing the scene, but who was actually a police informer, led to that person’s death.  But that is the way Doyle operates: possible collateral damage doesn’t enter his mind.

Later during a long-distance phone conservation between Barthélémy and Doyle’s US-based superiors, it is revealed that Doyle sent to Marseilles without being told that he was to be used as bait to draw Charnier out in the open (so we see that disregard for collateral damage seems to be routine on the US police side). Barthélémy regards this as unethical but agrees to go along with it and assigns two of his men to secretively trail Doyle at all times in order to protect him.

Doyle’s isolation is further depicted as he is shown cruising around Marseilles looking for girls at bars and chatting with bartenders, all the while struggling with the fact that he cannot speak French and noone he encounters can speak English. In the course of these activities, he is surreptitiously spotted by Charnier.  When Doyle detects that he is being shadowed by French police, he gives them the slip and is then immediately captured by Charnier’s men.

2.  Popeye’s Torment
The narrative now moves to Act 2, and it seems like we have been transferred into a different movie.  The pace slows down, and Popeye’s world shrinks to his handcuffed confinement in a small flophouse hotel under the supervision of Charnier’s men. They want to know what he knows about Charnier’s operations, and in order to get him to talk, they give their prisoner daily injections of heroin in order to get him addicted. Then they will torture their prisoner by only offering him further injections if he spills the beans.  At first Doyle is defiant, but gradually he slips into a drug-induced haze.  He finally confesses that he knows nothing and that he was sent over to France simply because he was the only one who could recognize and idenetify Charnier.

There is one interesting red-herring vignette when an aged British lady comes to his room and consolingly speaks to him.  Finally, it seems,he has met someone who speaks English and appears to be sympathetic.  The viewer’s anticipation that she might help is soon crushed when it is revealed that she is also a heroin junkie and has only approached him in order to steal his watch.

Charnier’s gang finally give Doyle what should be a lethal dose of heroin and then dump him on the road. Barthélémy and his men quickly find Doyle and attend to his emergency circumstances by pumping his stomach and giving him cardiac arrest treatment. Afterwards, they choose to detox him by making him go “cold turkey”, instead of by gradual withdrawal. This agonizing detox period is shown for the next ten minutes of screen time and slows the film’s pace even more.  For some viewers this section of the film is too drawn out, but it does offer Gene Hackman a platform to give a bravura acting performance as he goes through his withdrawal symptoms in front of the patiently attending Barthélémy.  In particular there is a memorable seven-minute monologue during which Doyle tries to explain his interest in baseball and its arcane culture, including his early encounter with the legendary Mickey Mantle, to the uncomprehending Frenchman.  Any baseball fan will sympathize with Doyle’s frustration when his listener doesn’t even know what a southpaw is. 

Gradually Popeye recovers from the addiction and sets about rehabilitating himself in order to renew his struggle against Charnier.

3.  Popeye Takes Over
After the painful and dolorous 2nd act and now with Doyle back at full strength, the narrative pace is cranked up maximally for Act 3. Notions of due process now take a back seat to Popeye's impetuosity. This is where the film really comes into its own, but the previous two acts set things up for this final fever pitch to have its full effect. There are three high-tension episodes in this act that keep the relentless narrative momentum of this act rolling at a high speed:

1. Torching the Flophouse
2. Battle in the Dry Dock
3. Busting the Drug Lab

3.1 Torching the Flophouse
The first such episode occurs when Popeye, now back out on the street, finally notices a sign that he recognizes is associated with the flophouse where he had been incarcerated.  He immediately gets a can of gasoline and torches the whole place.  This vengeful and impetuous action may have cost some lives of the inhabitants, but it flushes everyone out of the flophouse.  Popeye then savagely catches and beats a person that he recognizes fleeing the blaze and forces him to reveal the whereabouts of Charnier: he is at the ship dry dock seen at the beginning of the film.

3.2 Battle in the Dry Dock
The second episode follows on immediately when Popeye, Barthélémy, and some police rush over to the dry dock where Charnier’s gang is removing metal containers, presumably carrying drugs, that were welded to the ship’s hull.  When Charnier’s man, Jacques, notices the police sneaking up on them, a spectacular gunfight breaks out, with Jacques blazing away with a submachine gun.  Popeye and Barthélémy get trapped in the bottom of the dry dock, and the gang proceeds to open the floodgates in order to drown them.  Popeye and Barthélémy barely survive the battle, and Charnier gets away.
 
The next day Barthélémy is about to arrest the ship’s captain for complicity in the heroin trafficking when Popeye convinces Barthélémy to let the man go free. By surreptitiously tracking operations at the docked ship, he argues, they can trace a connection to Charnier.  By now Popeye is calling all the shots, and the hitherto more methodical Barthélémy is gradually adopting Popeye’s breakneck style.  Popeye’s philosophy of shoot first and ask questions later has taken over. When they trace another one of Jacques’s moneybag transfers to Charnier’s drug lab headquarters, the stage is set for the third episode.

3.3 Busting the Drug Lab
When they reach Charnier’s drug lab, they don’t block all the exits and lay siege to the place, demanding surrender. That would be too logical.  Instead they just burst through the door with guns blazing.  Again there seems to be a needless loss of lives by the police acting so recklessly.  And again Charnier slips away, but Popeye follows in hot pursuit.  We now come to the sublime final 7 minutes and 40 seconds of the film, when Popeye exhaustively chases after Charnier.  This passage is accompanied by oddly contemplative background music by Don Ellis (he also did the music for The French Connection) that further adds to the effect and makes the rivoting ending of the film almost surreal. 

Fernando Rey is very good in the role of Charnier, and even minor changes to his facial expressions often convey changes to his thinking while he is in conversation. Also effective is the performance of Bernard Fresson as Henri Barthélémy. But Gene Hackman’s performance as Popeye Doyle stands out above all, and his performance in this film was, in my opinion, the best of his stellar career.  It must have been extremely strenuous for him. There are many shots showing him maneuvering in perilous situations where his clear visibility indicates there was no double used [2]. He is the one who creates a character that connects those three disparate acts into a meaningful whole and makes those final minutes so memorable.

★★★½

Notes:

1. A detailed comparison of the two films might be interesting, but I won’t pursue that topic here.
2. Indeed those chase scenes inivolving Hackman must have been particulary strenuous for him, since he was suffering from a damaged knee  – see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073018/trivia.

“Bonnie and Clyde” - Arthur Penn (1967)

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was a landmark American film that uniquely combined European art-house aesthetics with mainstream Hollywood cinematics. This commingling of styles, along with problems ascertaining just what the film actually stood for, confused audiences and critics at first.  But it ultimately rocked the American film scene and became a critical and box-office smash.

Actually, the perceived Hollywood/Art-House combination was founded in the script, because scriptwriters David Newman and Robert Benton were big fans of French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) films, particularly Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) and Francois Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Newman and Benton initially shopped their finished script around – first to American Arthur Penn (who first declined because he was already busy with another project), and then to Truffaut, and then to Godard.  But for various reasons nothing came of these negotiations.  Eventually Warren Beatty bought the rights to the script and, after further shopping around, finally convinced Arthur Penn to be the director. 

The story of the film concerns the somewhat fictionalized account of two real-life outlaws, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who achieved widespread notoriety for their crime spree in the central United States during early 1930s.  This was the period of the Great Depression, when banks were commonly perceived by the dispossessed poor as tools of the wealthy extractive coalition (a phenomenon that, of course, has always persisted).  So daring bank robberies by poor folks like the Barrow Gang took on the proportions of heroic myths.  In fact Clyde Barrow preferred to rob smaller stores, rather than banks, but in the public’s eyes, they were celebrated specifically as heroic bank robbers and were seen as a modern-day version of Robin Hood’s gang.

Since the movie features romance, comic moments, and generally humanizes people who were ruthless killers, a number of critics denounced the film early on as trash. For example, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther commented [1]

"It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie.
. . .
Such ridiculous, camp-tinctured travesties of the kind of people these desperados were and of the way people lived in the dusty Southwest back in those barren years might be passed off as candidly commercial movie comedy, nothing more, if the film weren't reddened with blotches of violence of the most grisly sort."

In fact the previews were so negatively reviewed that the producers were thinking of only offering a limited release to drive-in theaters.  But there were a few positive responses that started to turn things around.  For example, Roger Ebert, in the first year of his career as a film critic, wrote at the time [2,3]

"This is pretty clearly the best American film of the year. It is also a landmark. Years from now it is quite possible that Bonnie and Clyde will be seen as the definitive film of the 1960s . . ."

Soon the movie became a smash hit and by the end of the year was nominated for 10 US Academy Awards [4].  The naysayers did have a point, though, and I will return to this issue below.

Whatever one’s overall evaluation of the film may be, there is no doubt that the film’s production values were high.  Penn’s stage theatrical experience was probably instrumental in bringing out memorable acting performances.  In fact a number of actors who got their first major public exposure via this film went on to successful careers, including Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder, and Estelle Parsons. And interestingly, many people still remember those actors mostly for their performances in this film.  In addition the film editing (for which Dede Allen won an Oscar) and the cinematography were outstanding.

Those factors gave the film polish, but what ultimately made it fascinating was Penn’s intermingling (via Newman’s and Benton’s script) of existentialist themes (perhaps inspired by French New Wave films) with more traditional American social themes. This was brought about by the elevated significance of the relationship narrative in this film. It is often the case that a film will have two narrative threads – one narrative associated with external events and another narrative associated with the relationship between two principal agents.  Usually the relationship narrative is secondary and supportive of the main external narrative.  But here in Bonnie and Clyde the relationship narrative (RN) ascends to primacy, with the external narrative (EN) receding and then intervening in bursts of violence.

So we can examine these two narrative threads separately. The external narrative concerning the violent criminal exploits of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow covers their life on the run as outlaws.  It does so by vividly contrasting the American (US) cultural traditions of glorifying guns and outlaws with the brutally violent consequences to which those traditions lead.  Americans possess far more guns per capita than any other country, and this leads to far more homicides than, for example, European countries where the gun possession rate is lower [5].  But Americans have always had a love affair with guns and like to point to the fact that gun possession is enshrined as a right in the US Constitution.  In addition, Americans, in common with many people, tend to have a romantic image of outlaws who manage to defy the authorities and escape incarceration.  There is a long tradition of celebrating notorious outlaws such as Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are also members of this club [6].  Although the real Clyde Barrow was evidenetly a ruthless killer, he is presented in this film in a softer and more sympathetic form.  Yet when the killings take place in the film, there is no reservation and the bloody violence suddenly splashes across the screen.  This back-and-forth contrast between the romanticized images of the outlaws and the explosive moments of carnage is one of the features of the external narrative.

The external narrative (EN), which opens suddenly with no backstory and terminates just as quickly, can be seen to pass through three phases.

EN 1 – Bonnie and Clyde Hook Up

In the first phase, Bonnie Parker (played by Faye Dunaway) is shown lying in her bed and bored with her mundane life.  Looking out of her upstairs window, she notices a young man, Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) attempting to steal her mother’s car.  Mischievously excited, she comes down and banters with Barrow and is immediately captivated by his charming bravado.  She dares him to make a robbery in town, and he immediately does so, after which he steals a nearby car.  Thrilled by what she has witnessed, she jumps into the car and immediately starts covering him with kisses while he drives. So from the outset we see what Bonnie and Clyde want: he wants to be a daredevil thief with a trophy glamour girl, and she wants to be with a man who can give her constant excitement.

After some more robberies, they recruit a mousy, but capable, teenage boy, C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) to be their driver, and they rob another bank.  On this occasion, CW’s poor driving messes up their getaway, and Clyde shoots and kills a man who had hopped onto their car as they drove off.  At this point, Clyde is now a murderer and presumably will become known to the police.

EN 2 – The Gang Flourishes

In the second phase, Clyde hooks up with his brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), and they make plans to roam across the central US states and rob banks.  They pull off a number of robberies during this phase.  In the process there are several violent shootouts with the police, but they manage to escape on each occasion. These escapes were facilitated by their crossing state lines, which took them into another police jurisdiction and out of the legal range of their police pursuers.  They also capture a Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), who had been following them, and they taunt him by using their Kodak camera to take humiliating “selfies” with him.  Throughout this period, the Barrow Gang is gaining notoriety in the press, and the gang revels in their daring and breathtaking undertakings.

EN 3 – Downfall
While stopping for the night in Platte City, Iowa, they are recognized by a customer, who notifies the police. That night an armada of police cars ambush the motel, and a violent shootout takes place. Buck is mortally wounded, and his wife is blinded by shattering glass. Bonnie and Clyde are both wounded, but somehow they and CW manage to escape the scene in another stolen car.  On the road again, CW stops their car at an impromptu camp for the dispossessed and asks for some water.  The poor people there recognize Bonnie and Clyde and show quiet reverence for people that have been defying the brutal system that has left them desolate.  Then CW takes them to the home of his father, Ivan Moss. Ivan graciously puts them up, but secretly he goes to meet Frank Hamer, who has all along been trying to track down Bonnie and Clyde. Ivan arranges with Hamer to betray Bonnie and Clyde in exchange for a light prison sentence for his son, CW.  Some days later, when Bonnie and Clyde are driving back home from the town, they are tricked by Ivan Moss into stopping their car, whereupon they are massacred by a fusillade of bullets from police hiding in the bushes.  With that the film comes to an abrupt halt.

Throughout this external narrative Bonnie, Clyde, and Buck are portrayed as relatively innocent, fun-loving characters who just happen to rob banks.  When they kill people, it is usually in the midst of firefights when their own lives are in danger.  By contrast, Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and Ivan Moss are shown as particularly unlikable and odious – they are unprincipled, oppressive, and devious. The viewer’s sympathies have been steered towards the Barrow Gang, even though they are notorious outlaws. 

So much for the external narrative, which roughly follows the known facts about Bonnie and Clyde’s activities.  It is the relationship narrative (RN), however, which incorporates the existentialist themes that make the film stand out.  Again there are three phases that roughly overlap with the external narrative.

RN 1 – Bonnie Meets Clyde

Early on when Bonnie madly kisses Clyde after his first holdup, Clyde becomes distressed and warns her that he is not a lover boy.  So from the beginning we have an insight into Clyde’s personal anxieties.  Bonnie is humiliated to have her advances repulsed, but she persists in her admiration of Clyde.  Later, after Clyde committed his first murder, he tells Bonnie that she is still unknown to the police and that she can return to her home.  But Bonnie refuses; she is in love with Clyde.  Her demonstrative love for him inspires Clude to try to make love to her, but he is impotent and humiliated by his inability to do it.  Again she stands by him, even then.  So now both Clyde and Bonnie have suffered extreme personal humiliation and self doubt.
       
RN 2 – Gang on the Run

In the second phase of the film, Bonnie wants to spend some time alone with Clyde, but finds herself cooped up with the rest of the gang. Buck is jocular but boorish; CW is simple-minded; and Blanche perpetually nags and complains in shrill tones.  We can see that Bonnie is more refined than that – she spends some of her time writing poetry, such as the “Story of Suicide Sal” [7].  She evenetually grows weary of life on the run and finally runs away from them all.  But in an ominously cloud-beset field, Clyde finds her and agrees to take her to visit her mama.

When they make the visit, Clyde tries to be cheerful, but the mood is bleak.  Bonnie’s mama warns Clyde that he better just keep running.  Later, Bonnie also expresses her lost faith,

“When we started out, I thought we was really going somewhere. 
  But this is it . . . . We’re just going.”

RN 3 – A Love Fulfilled
But near the end of the story, after Bonnie and Clyde have made their last escape and have recovered from their wounds, Bonnie recites to Clyde another of her poems, “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde” [8], which is a paean to their desperate drive for freedom and authenticity.  One of the stanzas reads,

    They call them cold-blooded killers
    They say they are heartless and mean;      
    But I say this with pride,      
    That I once knew Clyde
    When he was honest and upright and clean. 

Upon hearing that heartfelt tribute to their togetherness, Clyde’s self doubts dissolve at last, and he is able to physically consummate his relationship with Bonnie – which gives her the reassurance that he truly loves her. They have finally attained bliss just before they die.

The two narratives of Bonnie and Clyde move through different and contrasting arcs. The external narrative arc moves upward at the beginning and reaches its peak in the middle of the story. Then it comes crashing down to the depths at the end.  The relationship narrative arc starts out with early promise, but then soon moves downwards to a low, before rising up to a high point at the end.

But overall, Bonnie and Clyde’s juxtaposition of contradictory narratives manages to mirror our own precarious existence. We continually construct romanticized narratives of our own lives that feature humanized goals of fulfillment, but these narratives are constantly being interrupted by brute events that often violently disrupt our fantasized stories.  Then we get back on the road and start anew and build up another story.  Bonnie and Clyde takes this process to extremes and reminds us of our limits.  We basically knew from the outset that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were doomed.  But we became immersed in their impossible world and followed along with them.  And when they finally became united in their love, well, . . . what more could they have achieved?
★★★★

Notes:

1. Bosley Crowther, “Bonnie and Clyde”, The New York Times, 14 April 1967.    
2. Roger Ebert, “Bonnie and Clyde”, RoberEbert.com, 25 September 1967.
3. Roger Ebert, “Bonnie, Clyde and the Critics”, RogerEbert.com, 10 December 1967.
4. The following year Bosley Crowther was dismissed as the regular New York Time film critic, and it was widely believed that the reason for his removal was his misreading of Bonnie and Clyde.
5. The US population possesses 88.8 guns per 100 residents, while in the UK there are 6.6 guns per 100 residents, see “Number of Guns per Capita by Country”, Wikipedia, (21 August 2015).
6. Note that Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Clyde Barrow, and Bonnie Parker were all killed by law enforcers in the same year, 1934.
7. Bonnie Parker, “The Story of Suicide Sal”, (1932), About Education.
8. Bonnie Parker, “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde”, (1934), About Education.