The French Connection

The French Connection is a 1971 police action film, produced by Philip D'Antoni, directed by William Friedkin and written by Ernest Tidyman.  It starred Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey and Tony Lo Bianco.  

The French Connection was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, winning 5:  Best Picture (D'Antoni), Best Director (Friedkin), Best Actor (Hackman), Best Adapted Screenplay (Tidyman) and Best Film Editing (Gerald G. Greenberg).  Scheider was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, which was won by Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show (see post: The Real Ben Johnson).  

Filmed on the streets of New York City, The French Connection is the story of police detectives Popeye Doyle (Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Scheider).  One night while having drinks at the Copacabana nightclub, they notice Sal Boca (Lo Bianco) at a table with known criminals involved in narcotics.  Doyle and Russo follow him when he leaves.  

Boca stops for an early breakfast at Ratner's, a Jewish kosher dairy restaurant at 138 Delancy Street in the East Village.  This scene caught my attention as my family and I went to Ratner's often.  Our favorite dishes were cherry cheese blintzes and kasha varnishkes.  Ratners operated from 1905 until it closed in 2002.

Believing a shipment of heroin would soon arrive in New York, Doyle gets a warrant to wiretap Boca.  Through this, he learns the heroin is coming from France.  

Alain Charnier (Rey), French drug kingpin, convinces his TV personality friend, Henri Devereaux (Frederick de Pasquale), to hide the heroin in his car (a Lincoln) which is going to cross the Atlantic to New York via a cruise ship.  

Realizing Charnier is the key to catching the criminals with the heroin, Doyle follows him through the streets of Manhattan before losing him on a subway car (the Grand Central Station Shuttle to Times Square).  

Charnier's hit man (Marcel Bozzuffi) unsuccessfully tries to assassinate Doyle near his apartment at the Marlboro Housing Projects off Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn.  At the time, my ex-wife Bonita worked as a teacher in a day care center nearby.

Doyle (in a commandeered Pontiac Le Mans) then chases the assassin (who was on an elevated B subway train) through 86th Street in Bensonhurst.  It was "one of the greatest car chase sequences in movie history."  After the train crashes, the assassin escapes the subway car but is shot (in the back) by Doyle while trying to flee.

Eventually, Doyle and Russo discover the heroin hidden in Devereaux's car, but leave it there.  Later, Charnier drives the car to an old warehouse on Wards Island to sell the drugs to Boca and his associates.  Doyle and a large police unit also arrive, killing Boca in a shootout and arresting the others, except Charnier, who somehow disappears without a trace.  However, he reappears along with Doyle in the sequel of The French Connection.