MovieChat Forums > The French Connection (1971) Discussion > "It all cuts."...Billy Friedkin...

"It all cuts."...Billy Friedkin...


... really cracks me up in the Blu-Ray special features, including the commentary. It's almost a self parody.

Nevertheless he says a great thing when talking about and (rather tortuously) walking through moments from the chase scene.

"It all cuts. Everything cuts. If the audience is immersed in your story, it all cuts."



Glasgow's FOREMOST authority Italics = irony. Infer the opposite please.

reply

Freidkin was admitting the importance of film editing - and of the fact that no one would attempt to film a car chase in real time (well, maybe it could be done in the desert).

It perhaps shows the power of movie illusions that I was surprised to find out many years after the film's release that a car chase was not part of the real French Connection case. It would be interesting to see what Friedkin could have done with the story without a chase.

In any case, car chases still seemed a - fresh idea? a novelty? - back then. Decades later, not so much. Note that by 1980 The Blues Brothers had a nice bit of parody with a car chase on elevated tracks instead of beneath them.

reply

That's true. I think he was implying that people thought what he was doing was crazy because he din't just plonk the camera down and have the car rolling by and was getting all these close ups, tracks and zooms.


I thnk Blues Brothers also had the case under eleveted tracks actually. Not on them.

Glasgow's FOREMOST authority Italics = irony. Infer the opposite please.

reply

Right, it wasn't the Blues Brothers. I was probably thinking of Running Scared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH4x412oz2k

reply

Ah yes.

Glasgow's FOREMOST authority Italics = irony. Infer the opposite please.

reply