Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1971

The Contenders:

Stanley Kubrick: A Clockwork Orange
Norman Jewison: Fiddler on the Roof
William Friedkin: The French Connection (winner)
Peter Bogdanovich: The Last Picture Show
John Schlesinger: Sunday Bloody Sunday

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1971

The Contenders:

Chaim Topol: Fiddler on the Roof
Gene Hackman: The French Connection (winner)
George C. Scott: The Hospital
Walter Matthau: Kotch
Peter Finch: Sunday Bloody Sunday

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1971

The Contenders:

A Clockwork Orange
Fiddler on the Roof
The French Connection (winner)
The Last Picture Show
Nicholas and Alexandra

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1971

The Contenders:

A Clockwork Orange
The Conformist
The French Connection (winner)
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
The Last Picture Show

They Aren't Smuggling Crepes and Gruyere

Film: The French Connection
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

We all have those movies upon which we disagree with everyone else. I’m not talking about disliking a film like Citizen Kane; it’s become chic to hate on Welles’s classic with a certain type of film fan and/or blogger. No, I mean everyone has a couple of “everyone likes it” films that fit in a couple of other slots. First, there’s the “everyone likes it but me” film for those that gets universal praise…except for you. That’s Forrest Gump for me, and a few others I can think of. Then there are those films that just seem to wash over without leaving a solid impression. It’s not bad, per se, but you just can’t understand why everyone else loves it so much. In that category for me, first and foremost, is The French Connection.

It’s not a stretch to say that this is a widely loved and lauded film. It won a bunch of Oscars, including some of the biggies like Best Picture, Actor, Adapted Screenplay, and Director. I remember being excited the first time I saw it. And then…well… I shrug my shoulders. I simply don’t get it. I understand that it’s a good movie. I get that the action was innovative for the time. I understand that Gene Hackman was on top of his game. I just don’t understand why people seem to lose their shit over what seems to be a pretty standard cop drama. I feel alone in this, like I’m not in on the joke. This is a film that has been preserved as culturally important, one that’s still discussed. I don’t see anything here that’s so special, though. At least, what I see here I also saw in Bullitt from three or four years previous.