Spring 2015 #2: The French Connection (1971) - William Friedkin

Okay so I don’t know why but Netflix seems to have more Best Picture Winners than IMDb Top 250 films so that’s just how this list is going to go. Which I don’t have a problem with because they’re all on my Watchlist anyway.

The French Connection! I feel like I had vaguely heard of this film, but it’s more or less on the list simply because it’s #93 on the AFI Top 100 as well as being on Netflix.

The film follows two detectives, Doyle and Russo, trying to stop a major drug deal between a giant French heroine syndicate and the mob. They have smuggled $32 million of heroine into New York by hiding it in a French television star’s car and have to outsmart the detectives before making the deal.

It’s kind of exciting? I don’t know, the plot is kind of predictable: detectives have one tiny lead to go off of, lots of stakeouts, reach a dead end when the villains are overly careful, detectives get thrown off the case for not following the rules, villains slip up, detectives win. Just hearing the title, The French Connection, made me sad that that connection wasn’t Alain Delon.

Oh my god I can’t even.

Anyway the inspiration for the film came when William Friedkin was living with Howard Hawks’ daughter, and he asked her if she liked his movies, and she said they were lousy. She said, “Make a good chase. Make one better than anyone’s done.”

And thus one of the coolest chases in film history is born.

Doyle avoids an assassination attempt by the French drug dealer’s hitman, who then boards a subway train and literally commandeers the train while Doyle chases it underneath in his car. It’s actually 15 minutes of pure intensity and it was the one time in the film I didn’t look like this.

And this is the director who directed The Exorcist two years later! Crazy. I’m sorry, cop movies are not my thing.

The film went on to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing at the 44th Academy Awards. Fun Fact, this Oscars included a 12 minute long standing ovation for Charlie Chaplin receiving an Honorary Award, the longest applause in Academy history.

Fall 2014 #5: The Exorcist (1973) - William Friedkin

Alright so I was beyond excited to put this on my list. I feel like I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t scare easily, which took about… 21 years of desensitizing myself to horror movies by growing to absolutely love them for cinematic purposes. I still stay away from slasher films, but in the past two years or so I saw Carrie, The Shining, Nightmare on Elm Street, Night of the Living Dead, The Grudge, Silence of the Lambs, The Ring, Scream, and The Exorcist for the first time. I guess you could say

But I knew I had to get this one off my list before Halloween, so I sat down and let myself get taken away… to the 1970s.

I know, I know, scary. The film follows a 13 year old girl who is suddenly possessed by a very disturbing and cruel demon. After what seems to be weeks of hiring doctors, therapists, and running tests, Chris MacNeil (played by Ellen Burstyn) decides that to save her daughter she will need an exorcism.

To get to this point of desperation, Chris sees her daughter, Regan, do some pretty horrifying shit. 

When the priest, Father Karras, is contacted, the church also sends the help of Father Merrin, one of the only priests they know to have performed an exorcism before.

This is when the movie gets really good.

I should also probably mention that I had seen Scary Movie 2 before, so I knew a lot of these special effects were coming before they happened. This didn’t in any way affect my enjoyment of the movie. I loved every minute of watching Regan transform from a normal girl into the most hideous, foul-mouthed demon I had ever seen.

From that into this.

The process is pretty incredible. 

The film is also based on the events of a real exorcism, performed in Maryland in 1949. Supposedly most of the events that take place in the film actually happened, although the head-spinning-around is probably the most disputed of all.

Last fun fact: Adjusted for inflation, the film is the highest grossing R rated movie of all time. It also was so horrifying to viewers, that several injuries occurred due to audience members fainting in the theater.

The film won two Oscars, Best Screenplay and Best Sound.