Thirty-five years after it was made, the climatic car chase scene in The French Connection is still jaw-dropping in its suspense and execution. Director William Friedkin recounts how he created one of the greatest action sequences ever.
02-24-2009
21 min
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Michael Arick
Production:
Alston Road Productions
Key Crew
Producer:
Michael Arick
Editor:
Glenn Erickson
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
William Friedkin
William David Friedkin (August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023) was an American film, television and opera director, producer, and screenwriter who was closely identified with the "New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s. Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is best known for his crime thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
Friedkin's other films in the 1970s and 1980s include the drama The Boys in the Band (1970), considered a milestone of queer cinema; the originally deprecated, now lauded thriller Sorcerer (1977); the crime comedy drama The Brink's Job (1978); the controversial thriller Cruising (1980); and the neo-noir thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Although Friedkin's works suffered an overall commercial and critical decline in the late 1980s, his last three feature films, all based on plays, were positively received by critics: the psychological horror film Bug (2006), the crime film Killer Joe (2011), and the legal drama film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023), released two months after his death. He also worked extensively as an opera director from 1998 until his death, and directed various television films and series episodes for television.
Description above from the Wikipedia article William Friedkin, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Philip D'Antoni (February 19, 1929 – April 15, 2018) was an American film and television producer. He was best known for producing the Academy Award-winning 1971 film The French Connection.
D'Antoni attended Evander Childs High School in the Bronx. He then served in the United States Army from 1946 to 1948 during the occupation of Japan after World War II. He was eventually assigned to Special Services where he entertained troops by participating in theatrical productions. After army service, he attended Fordham University from 1948 to 1950, where he worked during the day attended school at night, and graduated with a degree in business administration.
D'Antoni began his career on television with the production of the specials Sophia Loren in Rome, Elizabeth Taylor in London, and Melina Mercouri in Greece.
He produced Bullitt in 1968. In 1971, he produced The French Connection, which won the Best Picture award, among other wins at the Oscars. In 1973, he produced and directed The Seven-Ups. After The Seven-Ups, D'Antoni, who held the rights to French Connection II and Gerald Walker's novel Cruising, eschewed feature filmmaking and turned his attention to television production where he enjoyed a lucrative contract with NBC.
D'Antoni's crime dramas are characterized by a cold, gritty, "street" perspective with documentary style, often filmed during the bleak New York winter months, and offer the viewer a realistic and often dangerous sense of being an insider, as opposed to using glamorous locations or produced sets.
D'Antoni won the Academy Award in 1972 for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Drama for The French Connection.
