(0034) The French Connection

October 10, 1971 | 3 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? The hard-boiledest police drama ever.

What did I get? The French Connection is an incredibly effective movie, a feat of sheer direction. It’s the quintessential gritty 1970s NYC movie, of course — I can’t think of a superior or more canonical one, anyway. It presents a remarkably convincing picture of undercover cops working drug cases at the moment when the very concept of the drug problem was entering the public’s consciousness. However, the skillful, pleasurable manipulations of The French Connection serve to smooth over a number of narrative and thematic flaws, and the movie is good enough — that is, asks to be taken “seriously” enough — that we can’t simply brush them aside.

(0029) Klute

June 27, 1971 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A sinewy, bracingly intelligent thriller.

What did I get? A masterpiece. It’s difficult to think of a Hollywood product as pervasively acute and well executed as Klute. By sheer alchemy it manages to be a thoroughly mesmerizing document of its time (without ever feeling limited by it) as well as a compelling study on the nature of intimacy, the movie’s real subject. It’s “just” a thriller, but Klute gives genre movies a good name.