The Academy Awards

I watched the movie "The French Connection" the other night, thinking there should have been a wall between France and Africa, or wherever the heroin was coming into Marseille from. Was the heroin coming into Marseille from Africa or from somewhere else? The movie didn't make that clear, or if it did I missed it, I suppose the heroin might have been coming from Turkey or from Afghanistan; the movie did make clear that the heroin was coming into New York City from Marseille, that much was clear, so perhaps a wall might have been built somewhere in The Atlantic, just offshore the west coast of France or the east coast of the United States, to stop the heroin coming from Marseille to NYC and, as the movie intimated, and then being distributed up and down the east coast.

I'd forgotten what a fine movie "The French Connection" is, and how timely given the current opioid crisis in the USA and the wall now being proposed for this country's southern border. There are several scenes set in Washington D.C. where Fernando Rey, who plays the drug smuggler Alain Charnier, is pictured in front of the White House and the Washington Monument, which suffuses the movie in a poignant yet completely contemporary glow given the current situation. Rey's such a great actor, it's no wonder Luis Bunuel employed him in so many Bunuel films. I wondered while watching "The French Connection" how Bunuel might have made the movie had he directed it instead of William Friedkin: I'm guessing it might have been a touch more violent, even surrealistic.

"The French Connection" won the Academy Award for 'Best Picture' in 1971.

I don't know why I was so surprised to learn there's a sequel, "French Connection II" starring Gene Hackman who reprises his role as Detective Popeye Doyle, and Fernando Rey, but directed by John Frankenheimer, who incidentially directed the original "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), a movie that also has contemporary resonance and itself was remade, not as sequel but more straightforwardly as a remake in 2004, directed by the Jonathan Demme and starring Denzel Washington and Liev Schreiber.

According to Wikipedia "French Connection II" has Hackman chasing Rey to Marseille, Rey having escaped capture in the original "French Connection." Not having seen the sequel I don't know how it turned out for either of them.