The French Connection 45th Anniversary Screening
Anniversary Classics presents the 45th Anniversary Screening of the popular THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), Saturday, June 18, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills (near La Cienega). A Q&A with Oscar-Winning Director William Friedkin will follow the film.
“Popular” is hardly the word for this legendary film. It was my “date” film in college and I saw it four times because I was so sure it could not miss as entertaining to anyone who saw it, nerd, jock, . I was right. It still stands up today.
It’s not only me who admires the film. Described as a “gritty and gripping police thriller,” the film won five Academy Awards in 1971, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Gene Hackman, and Best Screenplay. 
It’s “adrenaline-fueled,” frenetic chase scenes are among the best ever produced by Hollywood — Gene Hackman’s slaloming car run through the L-Train and his race on foot through the same territory immediately comes to mind. As exciting and longer than Steve McQueen in Bullitt. In fact, the two would make the perfect double-bill.
Reviews were as ecstatic as audiences. Tough film critic, Judith Crist, called it “a movie-movie supreme.” Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that THE FRENCH CONNECTION was “a slam-bang, suspenseful, plain-spoken, sardonically funny, furiously paced melodrama.” Even highbrow Stanley Kauffmann, writing in The New Republic, hailed “the most exciting picture I’ve seen since Z.”
The movie was multi-dimensional, filled with hypnotic characters and layered with realistically, potent social commentary about the moral compromises that may be endemic to police work. 
It also stands as one of the most vivid renditions of a decaying New York City ever committed to celluloid. Roy Scheider and Bunuel favorite Fernando Rey (as the suave European criminal kingpin) co-star.
William Friedkin, one of the key figures in the American cinematic renaissance of the 1970s, has directed such other films as The Birthday Party, The Boys in the Band, the enormously successful The Exorcist, Sorcerer, To Live and Die in L.A., Rules of Engagement, and more recently Killer Joe.
LAFCA president Stephen Farber will moderate the Q&A.
Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre, 8556 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills CA 90211, (310) 478-3836. Tickets are available at the theater box office and
104 minutes * rated R* DCP * USA * 1971
For more information, please see: http://www.laemmle.com/films/8033