“You still picking your feet in Poughkeepsie?”

Ian Talbot Taylor looks back at 1971’s The French Connection, which featured one of the most exciting and iconic car chases in cinematic history, and its underrated 1975 sequel, French Connection II

Opposite page: Marcel Bozzuffi and Fernando Rey

Clockwise from above: Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider;

Fernando Rey and Hackman on the subway;

Named as one of the AFI’s Top 100 American Films, The French Connection hit cinemas on October 9th 1971, wowing critics and audiences and earning a gross revenue of $51, 700, 000 from a budget of $2, 200, 000.

It received 8 Academy Award Nominations, winning 5 of them: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.

The plot follows two tough New York narcotics cops who stumble upon a massive, international drugs deal and attempt to bring down the Frenchman responsible for it. The film brilliantly inter-cuts between grimy, shabby New York and Marseille, which also offers tawdry (and violent) moments but presents scenes of beauty and wealth that convey the message that sometimes crime does pay.

However, the movie didn’t start off as a movie at all. It was inspired by a book written by Robin Moore and released in February 1969, a non-fiction account of actual events concerning two real-life New York narcotics cops Edwin Egan and Sonny Grosso.

Aware of their investigation, Moore approached the New York Police Department about writing a book on their exploits, involving months of stakeouts and the seizure of the largest cache of heroin ever picked up in New York.

The resulting book was heavy on detail, a long way from the movie adaptation that was to come, but it had a good handle on the characters of Eddie ‘Popeye’ Egan and Grosso, a cop with an exuberant, almost childlike enthusiasm, describing his job as being “Like a kid again… They give you a badge, they give you a gun, and a red light to put on top of your car.”