The AFI and National Film Registry featured: The French Connection, American Graffiti and Swing Time

6/11/16 The French Connection, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, 1971  #93 AFI, National Film Registry 


The French Connection won five Oscars, including three of the top awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Williams Friedkin) and Best Actor (Gene Hackman) and may have one of the most well-known car chases. The French Connection is definitely a movie of its time, taking us through a gritty, crime-riddled, drug infested New York City. Hackman and Roy Scheider play two New York City detectives who stumble onto an international drug ring moving into New York. Popeye Doyle (Hackman) and Buddy "Cloudy"Russo are partners, Doyle being more hot-headed and impetuous, and Cloudy trying to rein him in. A mysterious man from Marseilles, France, is planning to smuggle in a lot of heroin to the US, involving local Mafia connections to do so. Doyle and Russo spend a lot of time chasing around, fighting with the FBI, taking us on a tour of New York City (Ward's Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan).  Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) is the smooth criminal who leads Popeye and Cloudy on the wild goose chase. The French Connection is full of iconic movie moments: the car chase and the way the drugs are smuggled in (hint: it's a method often referenced in other crime dramas). I definitely enjoyed the movie, seeing 1970s New York, and finding those iconic moments; I always like watching Gene Hackman, a great American actor. It won five Oscars in a year that I think was full of fabulous movies, many of which won Oscars in other categories. Winning Best Picture, it beat out Fiddler on the Roof, A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show and Nicholas and Alexander (the only nominee I have not seen); Friedkin won Best Director over Peter Bogdanovich, Stanley Kubrick, Norman Jewison and John Schlesinger (not a small feat); I'm less familiar with the films from the Best Actor category, but I am familiar with the actors, and they are no slouches: Walter Matthau, Chaim Topol, George C. Scott and Peter Finch; I have only seen Topol's performance in Fiddler on the Roof, and they are such different movies, I'm not sure I could have judged. Without a doubt, this is an American classic.


6/11/16 American Graffiti, 1973 #62 AFI, National Film Registry

I have this very vague recollection that when the television show Happy Days came out, American Graffiti was mentioned as being an influence; I would have been only 9 or 10, so please forgive me if I am totally making that up. Anyway, I guess I was trying to say that the shadow of American Graffiti has followed me and I finally watched it. Directed by George Lucas and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, the movie takes place over one night in 1962 Modesto, California, with a group of friends having adventures together and separately. There are a lot of young actors who went on to have long acting careers, some a little more famous than others (Ron Howard, Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss). Cars and music are as important to the movie as the characters and stories.  There is young love, new love, making out, dancing, young people on the cusp of adulthood, some of them looking to get away from their little town and see the world. A coming of age movie, it is a time capsule of that era, when people listened to their favorite DJ, went to the drive-in for a malt and burger, before the Civil Rights movement was fully mobilized and there are virtually no African Americans in the movie. The music is a wonderful primer of the 1950s and 1960s, including music from Bill Haley and the Comets, Del Shannon, The Beach Boys, The Platters and more. I know very little about cars, but it was fun to see the cars from that time: a yellow deuce coupe, Ford Thunderbird, and the others. It was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, but lost to The Sting in both categories.

 7/2/16 Swing Time, Best Original Song, 1937, #91 AFI, National Film Registry

After watching Swing Time, I don't think it it is on the AFI and National Film Registry because of the plot or the acting, but because of the incredible dancing by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the music by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. The story was inane and I didn't pay too much attention except when Astaire and Rogers were dancing. My favorite dance numbers were "Pick Yourself Up" and "Never Gonna Dance" which Rogers and Astaire did together, and "Bojangles of Harlem", which Astaire did solo. Sadly (watching in the 21st century), he did it in blackface, according to Wikipedia as a tribute Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, whom Astaire admired. Trying to ignore the blackface, I really enjoyed the dance, which was fun to watch. The movie also featured the song "The Way You Look Tonight"which won the Oscar for Best Original Song. If you are a fan of dance films, Astaire and Rogers, Jerome Kern, then you should definitely check out this movie, and you can probably just fast forward between numbers. That's what I should have done.

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