One of the best films in one of the best decades for film.
I am genuinely perplexed as to why The French Connection is not rated more highly on Letterboxd. This is in so many ways such a standout film.
Even more so than Bullit or Dirty Harry, it is The French Connection which must have set the benchmark for this particular film genre and gritty, no-nonsense cinema in general. Gene Hackman as 'Popeye' Doyle is just one of the most iconic good bad guys in cinema history.
It is interesting that when Hollywood all but abandoned the production of their great historical epics following the box-office disasters of Cleopatra and The Fall of the Roman Emperor, they continued making them behind the Iron Curtain. It is only quite recently that I discovered the raw epicness of films like War and Peace and Marketa Lazarová. Films that each dealt with the history of the countries in which they were made. But a 1966 Polish film about ancient Egypt…
For the film whose box-office bomb prompted Howard Hawks’ self-imposed exile from Hollywood, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. This certainly is not amongst the best in his filmography, but it shows once again that, like Michael Curtiz, he was really at ease in almost any movie genre. My main issue with Land of the Pharaohs is that it sort of seems that he spent all of his mega budget in the film’s first 30 minutes, after which it becomes a sort of cheap melodrama – although ittedly, still with a great ending.
“No! He still follows his warrior gods marching to Wagnerian strains, his eyes still fixed upon the firey sword of Siegfried, and he knows subterranean meeting places that you don't believe in. The German's dream world comes alive when he takes his place in shining armor beneath the banners of the Teutonic knights. Mankind is waiting for the Messiah, but for the German, the Messiah is not the Prince of Peace. No, he's... another Barbarossa... another Hitler.”
Only Orson Welles…
