by Chris Marshall:
I have an interesting relationship with The French Connection in that I’ve never seen it before, but I’ve
written about it. More specifically, I’ve written about Pauline Kael’s review
of it in The New Yorker. Kael strongly
disliked the movie, claiming that it was “what we once feared mass
entertainment might become: jolts for jocks.”
My opinion wasn’t as harsh, but she was right about at least
one thing: it was one of a few films that came out around this time that had a
common theme. This, Dirty Harry, and Walking Tall were all made in the early
1970s, and all concerned law enforcement officials that had to go against the
wishes of higher-ups to catch the villains.
You can make up your own mind about why there were so many
films of this variety coming out at the time, but some common explanations were
that they were reactions against the Nixon administration, or the war in
Vietnam, or in some cases, a reaction against the reactions against the two
aforementioned topics. Kael also described Dirty
Harry as “fascist,” and Walking Tall doesn’t
exactly contain the most liberal themes in the world.
