The French Connection

The French Connection is not about crime or drugs or corruption or good cops or even bad ones, it is about following. Cameras follow people following cars following roads following trains following rails following... but at that distance the objects become indistinct and blurred, and we never really catch a glimpse of what is ultimately being pursued; or whether it, in turn, is pursuing something else. A web as labyrinthine and elaborate as the realpolitik of fifteenth century Florence binds its characters in mutual relationships of tracker and tracked, spinning concentric in relays and round-robins; and with every quiver of its enmeshed flies' wings, the whole fabric trembles.

In The French Connection, everyone is following everyone and everything else, dealers, drivers, policemen, Popeye, orders, hunches, everything except logic; and all the while, down by the waterfront, poor kids who can afford sticks but not pucks battle over tin cans on sidewalks weeping rancid tears through jagged cracks.