The French Connection

How this film uses it

Owen Roizman shoots the New York streets with a handheld camera, the way a documentary crew would. The camera is unsteady, the light is unglamorous and so is the city. As a result, the investigation feels like journalism done in real time inside a real case.

Where to see it

The stakeout sequences. The camera watches Doyle watching the smugglers, so the detective and the film are both doing surveillance. The handheld style has the discipline of patient watching.

How this film uses it

In the car-chase sequence, Doyle chases a hijacked elevated train in a car he has commandeered on the street below. Jerry Greenberg cuts it to a rhythm that matches the desperate improvising of the chase itself. What Doyle is attempting looks physically impossible, and the editing builds its momentum from that.

Where to see it

The elevated train chase. The car weaves through traffic below while the train runs above. The cutting between the 2 vehicles lets you feel exactly where each one is. It's fairly terrifying because of how real it looks.

How this film uses it

Roizman's photography turns 1970s New York into a grey, cold and hostile place. You see it in the Brooklyn stakeouts, the subway and the dark streets. The look of the city tells you that the world Doyle works in produces exactly the kind of moral damage you see in him.

Where to see it

The opening French connection. The heroin is hidden in a car in Marseilles. The golden Mediterranean light contrasts with the grey New York winter the drug is traveling toward.

How this film uses it

In one sequence, Doyle follows Charnier through a New York subway station, and the camera travels along with both the hunter and the hunted. You see how surveillance works in physical space. It plays out like a dance of watching and dodging.

Where to see it

Charnier slipping onto the subway as the doors close. Doyle is left on the platform. The tracking shot catches the exact moment Charnier gets away, thanks to a single second of hesitation.