Two reasons for watching this. I wanted to keep going with the maverick cop theme in early 1970s mainstream cinema, increasingly realising that corporate-invested popular culture (especially music and cinema) of that decade was substantially integral to the American right’s preparing the social context for their triumph in Reagan’s election and lighting the touch-paper proper for the neoliberal revolution. Second reason: I have long intended to post something (somewhere, not here) about a very good friend of mine, Chris Hartford (aka Soundcutter; we met at the Polytechnic of North London in 1985, he’s bound to come up on here again), who started making cassette compilations around 1990 (perhaps even before that), treating the compilation tape as a distinct art form and developing a continuity through the medium with each edition right up to the present day, absorbing the many technological mutations our experience of recorded music has undergone during the intervening decades. From the beginning, snippets of TV and movie dialogue have been a key element in each tape’s composition, with particular films and quotes reappearing, in some cases numerous times. One such quote (which is certainly on at least two ‘tapes’ - i.e. they continue to be ‘tapes’ even though they are no longer cassettes per se) was from what I now know is a scene where some pseudo-college-boy chemist analyses a sample of heroin and declares it…
… ‘absolute dynamite… 89 percent pure junk, best I’ve ever seen. If the rest is like this, you’ll be dealing on this load for two years…’
Now, these film quotes have long become a part of the compilations’ intricate tapestry; whenever I don’t know where they’re from, I generally don’t bother trying to find out - they become part of the compositionitself. In this particular case it wasn’t like I really cared; it was a casual enquiry, via SMS to Chris one day, but once I knew where the quote was from, I needed to watch the film itself. In the event I suddenly recognised other examples I hadn’t cared to know about before.
Having caught up, then, I’m kind of surprised that William Friedkin doesn’t seem to enjoy the same level of widespread, household-name reverence of a, say, Clint Eastwood or Martin Scorcese, since he’s been going a long time and, at a glance, it seems his movies garner critical acclaim. Including this one, although I have to say it doesn’t seem to have aged well. The racism and misogyny, while very much standard fare for this time, and of course scripted to lend an authenticity to the portrayal of seasoned NYC detectives (supposedly, although that doesn’t do the Boys in Blue any favours, either, historically – there’s quite an alarming racial police brutality episode early on), does jump out a little more bluntly and crudely than, say, Dirty Harry or Taxi Driver. What seems most dated, almost clumsy, is how crap the detectives are at surveillance; even in the 70s, surely you wouldn’t have sophisticated organised criminals wandering around completely inattentive to whether they were being tailed, or cops standing around in freezing weather, right across the street, in full view, from the restaurant where their quarry, the bad guys, are sat at the window, eating dinner.
It seems incredible the film was that year’s Oscar sweep, taking five, including best actor for Gene Hackman – I’ve definitely seen him better. E.g. I notice The Conversation is showing at my local, presumably enjoying a reprint – he didn’t get one for that, although ir seems he was nominated for a BAFTA. On the whole, the film was kind of ridiculous and felt heavy-handed. I also thought the plot was a bit clunky, till I realised it’s based on a true story (courtesy of the ‘what happened to them afterwards’ captions on screen at the end). Maybe the attempt to shoehorn a real story into an action thriller meant it didn’t really work (for this viewer) as a piece of cinema.
The best thing by far is Don Ellis’s brilliant, unconventional and, at times, avant garde score, which opens up another portal for me, to check out the other handful of 1970s films he soundtracked. Another music footnote: there’s a club scene early on (sexy dancer sort of joint, seemingly almost de rigueur for anything 1970s concerning cops – even in the opening title montage for Starsky & Hutch). There’s a really good female vocal trio, reminiscent of The Supremes, on stage at the club; I was surprised to find out at the end they were actually The Three Degrees, who were chart regulars later on in the decade (‘When Will I See You Again?’ being the first hit that comes to mind). I remember people talking, sometime late 70s, about how there was a queue over a mile long to see them play at the The Rec (short for Recreation Centre) in Bridgend. For me, there’s always a Bridgend connection.
Hi. On ‘crap surveillance’, I wondering whether I agree with you there. Thinking outside the box, might it be the case that they were employing methods that suited the tailing of home grown NYC criminals who we do grgg to to see in this film, whereas Charnier (Frog One), an outsider more used to the narrow alleys of France is more shrewd and switched on than the norm and knows he is unable to spend more than 5 minutes in New York without being in the company of a cop. He brings a clever shrewd element to shaking off the cops at The shuttle at Grand Central station where Popeye is let down by his colleagues carelessness and subsequently falls into a clumsy error and despite taking off the outer layer (coat) blows his cover. It’s an interesting question. In today’s world, yea I’d agree, but back then…. A clumsy cat would still catch a clumsy mouse.