#93 - The French Connection (1971) - William Friedkin

The French Connection is a movie of contrasts. The opening scenes jump between Marseilles, France and New York City, highlighting the luxurious French coast and the dingy, deserted, urban wastelands of 1970s New York. A hit is carried out in France in the opening scene as the man behind it strolls his ocean-side estate, casually fishes, and drinks wine with his beautiful young wife. And in New York, two white cops patrol a black bar, rough up its patrons, chase one of them to an abandoned industrial park and rough him up some more as one of them tells his partner, “never trust a nigger.” The beauty and elegance of the life of the criminal is contrasted with the gritty and grimy world of the New York cops. This contrast strays from the traditional buddy-cop genre and sets us up to root for the bigoted and sleazy cops in their world of dirt who are trying to bring down the elegant and outwardly-respectable criminals.

The cops are Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider). They are narcotics detectives stuck with a dry spell of drug activity, looking for leads and something to do. And without either, they follow one of Popeye’s notorious hunches – notorious, we later learn, because one of them led to the death of a cop, though we don’t learn why or how, but Popeye will fight anyone who brings it up. That’s our hero. The chief relents and allows the pair to follow and wiretap a suspicious-looking fella who wines and dines with high society by night and slums it with his wig-wearing wife at their small-time grocery store by day. After a few cold days and nights of stalking, the hunch pays off as the two overhear their target Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) arrange to meet up with a Frenchman for some kind of drug deal.

The rest of the movie is Popeye and Buddy putting the pieces together. The contrasts continue. We learn more of the details of the plan as the Frenchman and his associates plot it out at their rendezvous on a seaside castle in France, while the cops stand outside and wander around freezing in New York, among petty drug dealers and users, litter, and burning garbage cans. The French plan is sophisticated – it involves a famous French actor importing a car (stashed with heroin) to use for a documentary in New York, various levels of the mob, a chemist, a grocery store cover-up, and international coordination. The cops, on the other hand, rely on a hunch and a lucky break from a questionable wiretap. At one point the Frenchman makes it to New York and Popeye tails him. In one scene the Frenchman is eating at a fancy restaurant. It is shot so that he is in the foreground, in the warm light of the restaurant, enjoying his multi-course meal, while through the window and across the street, Popeye leans against a wall, warming his hands on a paper cup of coffee and eating a greasy piece of pizza. The life of the criminal and the life of the cop.

The action picks up from there as the Frenchman is fully aware of being followed and cleverly evades Popeye in the subway in one of the best scenes of the film. The Frenchmen then turn the tables and try to take out Popeye with a sniper. This leads to another one of the best scenes and probably the most well-known scene from the movie. Popeye chases the sniper to the subway (or elevated train). The sniper gets on and Popeye has to confiscate a car to chase down the train. The scene is spectacular and still genuinely thrilling. The only soundtrack during the chase is the screech of tires, the roar of the engine, and chaotic horn honking. And even here there is stark contrast, as the scene cuts between the sniper calmly making his way through the train to take the driver hostage, while below Popeye crashes the car a couple times, honking and cursing like a madman, while narrowly avoiding traffic and pedestrians. Apparently it was shot with real traffic and real pedestrians and at one point the car has to avoid hitting a real woman pushing a carriage with a real baby inside. The realness is what makes it thrilling.

The entire movie is filled with this sense of realness – it feels like a realistic depiction of police work. Though Popeye is a loose cannon, he’s not a rogue cop. He’s not likeable and he’s not much of a hero, but he’s not a villain or an anti-hero either. This ambiguity feels true-to-life as things are rarely black and white. His methods are questionable and sometimes morally ambiguous, but he gets the job done. The movie is based on the true story of one of the biggest drug busts in history, and was adapted from a book detailing the real-life details. The French Connection preserves this authentic approach as the ending manages to be clear and cinematically satisfying, while preserving the ambiguity, and troubling aspects of real-life police work and the legal system. And it shows that no matter how posh, polished, and elegant the criminals, they can’t be caught without the cops getting their hands dirty.

#94 - Pulp Fiction (1994) - Quentin Tarantino

The title of Pulp Fiction refers to the type of stories written in old-fashioned novels and magazines printed on cheap paper (wood pulp paper) best known for their lurid, sensational, and exploitative subject matter. With titles such as Dime Detective, Startling Stories, Weird Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Spicy Detective, the stories dealt with the darker, seedier side of society, and usually involved crime, criminals, and violence. Pulp Fiction deals with the dark and seedy side of society, involves crime, criminals, and violence, and is often Startling, Weird, Thrilling, and even a little Spicy. It pays homage to the pulp tradition and revels in its messiness, rolling around in the muck like a pig – but a loveable pig enjoying the muck for the muck’s sake.

And there is plenty of muck. Hitmen, gangsters, drug dealers, petty criminals, and rapists; overdoses, torture, robberies, murders, back stabbings, and actual stabbings; sex, foul language, racism, and bloody, bloody violence. But it is done in a tongue-in-cheek, ironic way that makes all the filth fun and often very funny. Some of it is over-the-top, as it incorporates a comic, wacky style of violence common in pulpy superhero stories and animation. But it also includes the serious violence of gangster movies and crime stories. The movie plays with the smut and grime using the full bag of tricks it inherited from the variety of pulp genres. It’s funny but it’s not a comedy. It’s dark but it’s not a noir. It transcends genres as it incorporates and pays tribute to the variety in the pulp tradition, and it has generated tributes and copycats as one of the most influential films of the 1990s.

One of the things Pulp Fiction is best known for its narrative structure. The movie tells three interconnected stories deliberately out of order, giving pieces of each story here in there, just a little at a time, cycling back around and adding a little more until it all comes together. The first story involves a hitman (John Travolta) escorting his boss’s wife (Uma Thurman) out for a night out at a 1950s-style restaurant when she accidentally overdoses on his potent stash of heroin. His frantic efforts to revive her with the help of his drug dealer are darkly funny. The next story follows the efforts of two hitmen (Travolta again, and Samuel L. Jackson, who is the highlight of an excellent cast) stuck with a bloodied car when one of them accidentally shoots an associate in the face while they’re driving in broad daylight. A cleanup man is dispatched to Quentin Tarantino’s house and they frantically clean up the car and the hitmen and leave before Mrs. Tarantino gets home from her graveyard shift at the hospital. It’s absurd and darkly funny again. And the last story involves a boxer (Bruce Willis) hired by the gangster boss (Marsellus Wallace, played by Ving Rhames) to throw a fight. He double-crosses Wallace, bets on himself, and tries to flee the country. But a watch handed down through generations (explained in a flashback by an incredible Christopher Walken cameo) that he left at his apartment brings him face to face with Wallace. The two of them eventually end up in a dungeon of sadomasochistic redneck rapists.

Everything is episodic and chronologically out of order. We are left in the dark for a long time about why the movie starts with couple of lunatic robbers, Honey Bunny and Pumpkin, planning a coffee shop robbery, or how dead characters show up alive later, or why the hitmen show up in beach clothes after a hit. But Tarantino leaves no strings loose and everything fits together in very satisfying ways.

It’s all a little gross, but the movie knows it’s gross and it’s having fun. And this fun is made obvious through the film’s use of language. The Oscar-winning script is known for its dialogue. At his best Tarantino can create nerve-wracking tension and suspense entirely on the strength of his characters’ conversations (one of my favorite examples, from Inglorious Basterds). And in Pulp Fiction Tarantino is at his best. He’s able to create that tension through mundane conversations about ordinary life that ordinary people would have. Putting those ordinary conversations in unusual situations heightens the awareness of the unusual situation and puts us on edge. As the hitmen drive to a building, get their guns, ride the elevator, and walk down the hall, they discuss the differences between the US and Europe (the well-known “Royale with cheese” – Paris’s take on the Quarter Pounder) and whether a foot massage is on the same romantic spectrum as certain other sex acts. The conversations are funny, but they’re the kind most people have with friends over lunch or while hanging out. You don’t expect such talk on the way to a hit. It continues even when they reach their target and the tension rises with Jackson’s voice as talk of burgers leads to a Biblical call-to-arms, pre-hit speech.

The dialogue is brilliant throughout the movie, as it powers and provides the electricity behind it. It’s like a new kind of action movie, with no need for high-octane stunts and explosions, as all the action is done in the language. Such language makes the characters and situations vibrant and memorable. It’s a big reason it became a cult classic and the favorite of fanboys around the world.

Like the tradition that gave rise to it, Pulp Fiction revels in the seedy and the profane. What passes for uplifting or moral is covered in a layer of dirt: redemption, resurrection, forgiveness, and honor happen among hitmen, addicts, gangsters, and murderers. But it all fits, and in fitting it all together, Pulp Fiction pays tribute to the pulp tradition, stacking up all its elements and splattering them all over the place. 

#95 - The Last Picture Show (1971) - Peter Bogdanovich

The Last Picture Show takes place in a small town and begins and ends with talk of high school football, just as life begins and ends with talk of high school football in small towns across North America. The town in the movie is a fictional one called Anarene, Texas, but it could be any real-life, wind-blown, dusty town anywhere. It is dry and still drying up, shrivelling up and drying out its inhabitants. New ones grow but they dry out too, usually towards the end of high school, and some stay dry their whole lives, while a few escape to get swallowed in the big city or killed in a war. The movie was released in 1971 but takes place in 1951 when kids got married or went to college or chose one of a few jobs or joined the army. Stay or go, but in a small town even leaving isn’t leaving – when everyone knows everyone they know where they’re going and it’s like not leaving at all.

The movie follows the adventures and misadventures of friends Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (a young Jeff Bridges) as they navigate their last year of high school and the pitfalls of graduation. There isn’t much to do in Anarene except hang out at the pool hall, go to movies, and chase the only eligible girl Jacy (Cybill Shepherd). Boredom seems to suck out ambition and harsh realities of life blow through the town like tumbleweeds, while the boys graduate and move on to nothing at all.

This nothingness is the reward for most high school graduations, when the system spits out graduates and leaves them to their own devices, but it seems to be exaggerated in small towns when there was little to do in the first place. The boys do what teenage boys do with too much time on their hands: they get into mischief, take impromptu road trips, get drunk, and try to have sex with girls – or with older women if girls aren’t available. Sonny has an affair with is coach’s wife, a sympathetic character whose life was dried up years ago. Duane is in love with Jacy who is more concerned with trying to have sex (for the first time) with boys – or with older men if boys aren’t available. She’s naïve but her good looks make her powerful and she wields that power like a sword too big to hold, tipping this way and that. Sonny takes his turn with her when she gets bored. She seems like a way out, like her beauty could take them both far and away, but word travels quickly and their foray is rooted out and snapped off.

The moral center of the town is Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), who owns the diner, the pool hall, and the movie theatre. Sonny’s family situation is never clear, but it is clear that it isn’t good, and Sam is a father figure to Sonny and almost everyone else in town. He’s wise, kind, and thoughtful and seems to know the secret to life. At one point he takes Sonny and another boy out to a pond to fish, even though there’s nothing in the pond but turtles and he doesn’t like to touch or eat fish anyway. Instead of fish, he casts for memories, ruminating on the past, when he used to take a girl there, skinny dipping, riding horses, and being in love. These memories seem to be his secret to keeping alive in the dying town. But as we watch Sonny and Duane fumbling around trying and failing to make such life-sustaining memories, we have little hope for their prospects. And even Sam’s memories only power him for so long as they seem to burn up in an emptying gas tank. Sam the Lion may be successful in Anarene, but he’s still in Anarene.

The movie is shot in black and white as if to emphasize the drabness of the town and life in it. There seems to be no buildings more than a storey high and the whole town looks hunched and huddled against the cold and heat and wind, or like it’s embarrassed to stand up straight and be something more. The soundtrack is made up of radios and jukeboxes actually playing in the scenes – characters change stations and put in money and make selections in the diner. It is all old country music, mostly Hank Williams, twanging about love when love is in the air and loss when sadness and disappointment resurface. The music is another constant in the town where little changes.

Some things do eventually change in town but they’re not for the better – the title gives one of these changes away. It’s not a hopeful movie, but it’s not pessimistic or depressing either. It’s realistic and beautiful in its sadness. Sometimes life loses its colour, not everyone succeeds, and boredom overcomes. And in small towns AM radios continue to narrate life while disappointing high school football teams and the dating lives of teenagers fill the gossip void until the team turns over the next year or someone gets married or dies.