The French Connection
Gene Hackman: A Week with the Gene Genie
July 25 - 31, 2025
Gene Hackman won his first Oscar for his now-iconic turn as Popeye Doyle, an obsessive narcotics detective barrelling through the city in pursuit of a heroin shipment.
Gene Hackman won his first Oscar as Popeye Doyle, a porkpie hat–wearing narcotics detective whose bravado masks a volatile, deeply compromised sense of justice. With Roy Scheider as his steadier partner, he barrels through a grimy, unvarnished New York in pursuit of a heroin pipeline—culminating in a car chase beneath Bensonhurst’s elevated subway that remains the genre’s benchmark few have crossed since. Modeled on real NYPD detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso (who granted Friedkin unprecedented access), The French Connection explodes the myth of the clean-cut cop, replacing square-jawed stoicism with brute obsession. Friedkin’s procedural, shot on the fly and seemingly without permits, is jittery, jarring, and impossible to replicate.
"The French Connection was really made in the editing room. One of the easiest sequences to do was the chase scene. It was relatively easy to do because everything was worked out minutely, carefully planned and checked in advance. Of course, there were some human errors and we did wreck a couple of cars before we were through."
—William Friedkin
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