One of the more fascinating aspects of the movies is their ability to reach across time and space and continue cinematic conversations started long ago. Moviegoers will be able to peek in on that conversation next week at The Boedecker Theater where both 1971’s The French Connection and 2015’s The Connection will share the screen.
Playing June 21, The French Connection adapts the non-fiction book by Robin Moore into a kinetic powerhouse of a film. Directed by one of the decade’s hottest directors, William Friedkin, The French Connection stars Gene Hackman as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Roy Scheider as his partner, Buddy “Cloudy” Russo. Their target: $32 million shipment of heroin from Marseilles and the French kingpin responsible, Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey).
Chocked full of players both stateside and foreign, The French Connection never pauses to explain or clarify, favoring relentless energy over exposition. A storytelling tool so effective that the entire movie can be cinematically — and iconically — boiled down to the image of Doyle’s commandeered ’71 Pontiac LeMans versus Brooklyn’s elevated train.
Doyle is a good cop who plays with a loose set of morals and pure energy. Now, 44 years later, audiences get the flipside of that record with another cop relentlessly pursuing the Marseilles-New York heroin racket, only this time, he’s not from the mean streets of New York but the picturesque south side of France.
Playing June 24-27, The Connection, directed by Cédric Jimenez, revisits familiar territory and presents the other half of the equation, filling in the who, what, where, when and how of the drug trade while positioning a familiar cat-and-mouse game at the heart of the story.
Stationed in Marseilles, police magistrate Pierre Michel ( Jean Dujardin) is slowly working his way through addicts and dealers up the food chain to drug kingpin, Gaëtan “Tany” Zampa (Gilles Lellouche), attempting to shut down a multi-million dollar heroin export business. Michel himself is a recovering addict (gambling was his vice) and like a drunk on a hot streak, he is willing to take this pursuit to the bitter end.
And the bitter end is precisely where these two are headed. Michel is playing with fire and Tany has ruled long past his expiration date. Both know exactly where this road ends; yet they are willing to run headfirst into the brick wall together and play their roles of cop and criminal to a T while the world around them pleads for sanity. These are not men; they are something simultaneously more and less. They answer to a higher calling, yet succumb to their addictions like common drunks.
Stylistically, The French Connection was a revolutionary break forward whereas The Connection is a throwback. The two movies meet in the middle, overlapping just enough to connect the dots without disrupting their individual continuity. It’s a fun trick, but more than that, it’s a reminder that just because the movie is over, the conversation is not done.
ON THE BILL: The French Connection, 4 p.m. Sunday, June 21. The Connection Wednesday- Saturday, June 24-27. The Boedecker Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7825.
