I've never been to Poughkeepsie, but I did watch The French Connection this week, plus a question for readers

I watched The French Connection for the first time this week, and it was every bit as good as its reputation.  OK, you already know how good it is, but what makes it stick out more than forty years later, other than fine performances by Gene Hackman and some of his supporting cast?

1) It's subtle, at times, for an action movie, no more so than when Hackman's "Popeye" Doyle engages in an arguably foolhardy action in the film's climactic scene. Any number of inferior TV and movie successors would have hit us over the head with the conflict of it all: a colleague trying to talk Doyle out of what he is about to do, or reaction shots of the colleagues shaking their heads after Doyle does it anyway, or both. Director William Friedkin just lets Hackman do his thing--a crowded scene, and then a fast cut to Hackman alone. It's a breathtaking moment, my favorite of the movie.

 At Bouchercon 2013 in Albany, I point out the
name of another New York city, whose
prominence in American popular culture
may have peaked with The French Connection.
==========================

2) The absence of hub-bub and police sirens as Doyle chases the sniper who had tried to kill him. (Doyle got down from the building's roof too quickly to have been able to follow the shooter so closely, a minor continuity problem that ought to hamper no one's enjoyment of the movie.) Quiet--I mean, regular, realistic quiet, not breathing or the sound of running feet, obtrusively over-amplified against a background of silence--can work a hell of a lot better than noise.

3) How much of that quiet was Friedkin's choice, and how much was due to the absence of cellphones in 1971? In 2014, Doyle would probably have called in police reinforcements before or during the chase of the sniper, which might have meant sirens and hub-bub.

What was the last classic movie you got around to seeing only years after everyone else had seen it already? How did it compare with its reputation?

 © Peter Rozovsky 2014

Arthur Penn's night movies, plus a note on the Internet and the decline of factual accuracy

I've finally got around to watching Night Moves and, while it does not move as slowly as one commenter here suggested, it hits the viewer over the head with references to its own antecedents — and then hits them over the head again with references to its own references.

So, we get Gene Hackman's Harry Moseby playing solo chess in his car as he lies in wait for his wife's lover. In case anyone misses the reference to Philip Marlowe, the lover then taunts him thus: "Come on, take a swing at me, Harry, the way Sam Spade would." And yes, Moseby plays a private investigator.

Or Moseby goes to interview a man on a movie set during the filming of a bi-plane flying low over a dusty country road. In case anyone doesn't get the North by Northwest reference, director Arthur Penn then has the stunt flyer buzz Moseby and the guy he's talking to, making them duck. In case anyone still doesn't get it, Hackman then says, "I'd say we saw the same movies."

Night Moves is thirty-five years old, and that sort of thing must have seemed a lot fresher in 1975 than it does today.

OK, that was the movie's first twenty minutes. Now, let's go watch the rest.

***

IMDb.com misquotes the line it singles out under "Quotes" on its main Night Moves page. The line as delivered by Jennifer Warren is

"When we all get liberated like Delly, there's going to be fighting in the streets."

and not, as the Amazon-owned, user-generated IMDb has it,

"When we're all as free as Delly there'll be rioting in the streets."

(By the way, Wikipedia has still not corrected at least one of the errors in its plot summary of Get Carter, errors I noted on Wiki's discussion forum at least six months ago. Factual accuracy is so pre-Wiki, so pre-digital, so pre-democratization-of-information a notion.)

N.B. IMDb has moved the quotation off its main Night Moves page, but it has not corrected its mistake. You now have to go "Quotes," then click "see more" and scroll down to find the inaccurately quoted line in question.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010