Top 5: William Friedkin Films
Blending a gritty documentary style with compelling fiction narratives, William Friedkin was one of the pioneering directors of the 1970s and cultivated an influential form that branded him as one of cinema’s greats. Closely linked to the New Hollywood movement (starting in the mid-60s and stretching to the early-80s), Friedkin burst into the mainstream with his raw neo-noir police procedural, The French Connection, and maintained a long and fruitful career that spanned various genres. He continuously explored exciting cinematic landscapes well into his late career and brought a palpable sense of danger and atmospheric dread to every project (sometimes through questionable and hazardous methods). Heralded as a modern master and one of American cinema’s most important and influential filmmakers, we celebrate Friedkin’s legacy by highlighting some of his most cherished and beloved gems.
5: To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)
Coke fiends, counterfeiters, car chases, and the musical sounds of Wang Chung collide in Friedkin’s dazzling mid-80s crime thriller. Lensed by world-class cinematographer Robby Müller, the film is a visual stunner that boasts phenomenal performances from William Petersen, John Turturro, and Willem Dafoe. Another frenzied, kinetic, and gritty neo-noir banger, To Live And Die In L.A. finds Friedkin once again relishing in moral ambiguity, blurring the lines between “good guys” and “bad guys,” and delivering an adrenaline-fueled car chase that rivals the one he previously gifted moviegoers in The French Connection. Shot on location, Friedkin establishes a visceral sense of immediacy, which was achieved through collaborators who could work fast and loose and improvise. He frequently created situations where the actors thought they were rehearsing when they were actually shooting, often using those takes in the finished film, and he allowed the performers freedom and creative input, sometimes even allowing them to devise their own blocking. Tense, grimy, wild, and unpredictable, the film is one of the most exciting action flicks of the 80s and showcases Friedkin’s knack for authenticity and stylish grit, making it one of his best.
4: The French Connection (1971)
Featuring one of the greatest car chases of all time and a career-defining performance from Gene Hackman, Friedkin’s French Connection broke the standard “cops and crooks” mold and delivered something totally new, gutsy, and exciting. Groundbreaking in its technique and approach to the police procedural, the film doesn’t overly dramatize its investigation, and it finds raw and realistic footing in its documentary style. Borrowing pages from Gillo Pontocorvo’s The Battle of Algiers and Costa-Gavras’s Z, the film establishes an authentic texture achieved through its on-location shooting, and it makes you feel like an active participant in its relentless pursuit of its heroin-trafficking syndicate. An early entry in Friedkin’s illustrious career, it finds him creating compelling and complex moral ambiguity within his hero, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, an incredibly flawed detective with racial blind spots who cuts corners, makes risky decisions, and has hunches that don’t always pay off. But it’s not Friedkin who judges our “hero,” he just presents Popeye, warts and all, and leaves it to the viewer to come to their own judgments and conclusions. A sizzling slow burn with an incredible jarring downer conclusion, the film rightly earned eight nominations at the 44th Academy Awards, winning five (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay), and it still stands as a testament to Friedkin’s powerfully unconventional filmmaking.
3: Cruising (1980)
Greasy and leather-bound, Cruising combines that classic Friedkin tension and grit with the Italian giallo and adds a dash of Kenneth Anger for good measure. With a clever double entendre title that blurs police patrol with men seeking sex, it was one of the earliest Hollywood films to shine a light on the underground gay subculture of the late-70s, introducing the mainstream to a slew of seedy bars, slang, and coded messages (via different colored bandanas). Based off a real case about a serial killer targeting gay men, Friedkin uses the backdrop of the S&M world for his sleazy queer murder mystery, and Al Pacino totally commits to the bit, delivering a performance loaded with nuance. Subject to several edits by the MPAA — Friedkin reporting he had allegedly taken it back to them “50 times before they would give it an ‘R’” — it was met with heavy criticism and a fair share of controversy for its depiction of homosexuality (including but not limited to production protests), but it has since found a cult following, which include the likes of Quentin Tarantino, the Safdie Brothers, and Nicolas Winding Refn. We consider it a misunderstood masterpiece with a profoundly unsettling edge that flexes Friedkin’s authentic ability to strike a nerve and get under the skin.
2: The Exorcist (1973)
Following the success of The French Connection, Friedkin delivered a horror film for the ages that continues to chill audiences. Some of America’s greatest working directors at the time were considered for the job before Friedkin, including Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, John Boorman, and Stanley Kubrick, but clearly the right man was hired for the job. Friedkin was always William Blatty’s choice of director, and his insistence (combined with French Connection’s massive success) ultimately landed him the job over Mark Rydell, who Warner Bros. had originally hired. Yet again, Friedkin brings a gritty docu-realist feel to this shocking supernatural chiller, but he also added some surrealist splashes, which is most notably evident in the film’s iconic street shot with Max von Sydow and the beam of light. At this juncture in cinema, no one had quite delivered a horror film like this, one with a pervasive atmospheric dread and an astoundingly convincing ability to make the utterly improbable feel real. It was also the film where Friedkin became labeled as difficult to work with, sending a prop master on a wild goose chase for a specific type of bacon (because he didn’t like the way it curled), demanding constant reshoots, and even firing and rehiring crew members, earning him the nickname “Hurricane Billy.” Regardless of the film’s difficulties, production methodologies, and status as a “cursed film,” the results are undeniably unnerving and spellbinding, creating an iconic horror film that still possesses audience to this day.
1: Sorcerer (1977)
Many may consider The French Connection or The Exorcist as Friedkin’s greatest cinematic achievements, but we will argue that his follow-up to those films, 1977’s Sorcerer, is the biggest, boldest, and best film of his career. In fact, we don’t just consider it to be his best film, we sincerely believe it is the greatest thriller of all time, containing some of the most gripping and visceral sequences ever committed to film. Ostensibly a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages Of Fear (a sentiment Friedkin strongly disagreed with), Sorcerer finds Friedkin’s docu-realist style, surrealist flourishes, fatalistic philosophy, and penchant for irony at its sharpest and most palpable. Its title is an obscure reference to the hands of fate and the notion that we have no real control over our lives, something Friedkin stated had “haunted me since I was intelligent enough to contemplate something like it.” The film’s fatalistic sentiment and feel-bad ending is thought-provoking, exciting, and expertly woven into the tapestry of this absolutely explosive and delirious neo-noir. If you felt like the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time or Uncut Gems spiked your heart rate and anxiety, you should watch Sorcerer’s phenomenally harrowing bridge scene, which is a work of pure cinematic madness. Even Friedkin himself considers Sorcerer to be his best film, but audiences and critics were not ready for it when it released in late June of 1977. As fate would have it, the film was over shrouded by George Lucas’ cultural phenomenon, Star Wars, which was released a month prior and even returned to the Mann’s Chinese Theater when Sorcerer underperformed, but audiences have since woken up to the monumental greatness of Friedkin’s true masterpiece, and we will never stop singing its praises.
Freakin’ out for more Friedkin?! Check out the links below:
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!