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From Road & Track
"The French Connection" car chase was as
dangerous as it looked
Renegade filmmakers, no city permits, and at least one
crash with an unsuspecting driver
1971's The French Connection
features one of the most harrowing car chases in cinema history: Detective
Jimmy Doyle (Gene Hackman) hurtling down crowded NYC streets in a brown Pontiac to catch a
bad guy who's commandeered an elevated subway train. It's a lurid orgy of
screeching tires, darting traffic, and considerable impacts–and as
Gothamist explains, much of it was shot on busy city streets with no
traffic control, putting unsuspecting drivers and pedestrians literally in the
center of the deadly high-speed action.
The car chase was filmed without obtaining the proper
permits from the city. Members of the NYPD's tactical force helped control
traffic. But most of the control was achieved by the assistant directors with
the help of off-duty NYPD officers, many of whom had been involved in the
actual case. The assistant directors, under the supervision of Terence A. Donnelly, cleared
traffic for approximately five blocks in each direction. Permission was given
to literally control the traffic signals on those streets where they ran the
chase car.
Even so, in many instances, they illegally continued
the chase into sections with no traffic control, where they actually had to
evade real traffic and pedestrians. Many of the (near) collisions in the movie
were therefore real and not planned (with the exception of the near-miss of the
lady with the baby carriage, which was carefully rehearsed).
A flashing police light was placed on top of the car
to warn bystanders. A camera was mounted on the car's bumper for the shots from
the car's point-of-view. Hackman did some of the driving but the extremely
dangerous stunts were performed by Bill Hickman, with Friedkin
filming from the backseat. Friedkin operated the camera himself because the
other camera operators were married with children and he was not.
And that sudden, jarring crash with a crossing
white Ford? There's a reason it looks so spontaneous: The other driver was
a local who stumbled unbeknownst into the renegade stunt shoot that was taking
place on an uncleared public road, according to IMDB:
The car crash during the chase sequence, at the
intersection of Stillwell Ave.
and 86th St.,
was unplanned and was included because of its realism. The man whose car was
hit had just left his house a few blocks from the intersection to go to work
and was unaware that a car chase was being filmed. The producers later paid the
bill for the repairs to his car.
Catch it at 3:27 here*:
[* Article says 2:41 as it features
a shorter youtube version of the chase.]
This five-minute car chase
is, of course, a thriller to watch, thanks in no small part to the stunt
driving of Bill Hickman,
who piloted the black Dodge Charger that dueled with Steve McQueen in
Bullitt.
But filming it this
way was astoundingly reckless,
especially in the days of no crumple zones, metal dashboards, and minimal
seatbelts. That's to say nothing of the pedestrians. With the perspective of
time, the filmmakers now seem to grasp that fact, though some renegade swagger
still shows through in the retelling of the tale.
With that said, it's still a
phenomenal movie. The legend of its filming will never be repeated by
big-budget filmmakers, though the reckless stupidity of rogue GoPro-wielding
YouTube wannabes can never be underestimated.
And now that we've had a good
scoff, aren't you in the mood to rewatch this classic? Good news: It's
just been added to Netflix streaming
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