Harrison Ford is profiled in current Esquire. Written by Ryan D’Agostino, the longish article is titled “Harrison Ford Has Stories to Tell.” About halfway through Ford articulates a feeling about the emotional, spiritual and even psychological nourishment that the best films provide.

It is this very nourishment factor, of course, that 95% of big-screen attractions don’t provide. Movie theatres used to be regarded by certain devotees (i.e., “film Catholics”) as churches, but over the last 15 or 20 years they’ve become gladiator arenas. They cater to animals.

Posted a few hours ago on HE;

The censored version of the 1971 Oscar-winner is currently streaming all over (Criterion Channel, TCM, iTunes) and was shown at Santa Monica’s Aero theatre on 5.12.23.

Three days ago (Saturday, 6.3) I posted about the censoring of a six-second sequence in William Freidkin’s The French Connection, apparently by rights holder Disney over concerns about Gene Hackman’s ruthless cop character, Popeye Doyle, using the N-word. The next day I refreshed and summarized same (6.4).

This is obviously a huge deal, and yet no columnist or critic has said a DAMN THING since last Saturday. Are they afraid of complaining about the deleting of an ugly word in a classic film? Most likely, yeah. Are they holding themselves in check because they feel obliged to be “good Germans” in the woke sense of that term? You betcha.

There’s also the possibility that they don’t want to give me any credit for raising a stink, and that personal animus means more to them than calling out woke censorship as it affects what is arguably the finest urban-cop thriller ever made.

Until this morning (6.6), that is, when Breitbart’s John Nolte posted a piece about same. Draw your own conclusions. Mine, as noted, is that others (including certain filmmakers) are too chicken to say anything. That or their pettiness knows no bounds.

Paul Stanley and Harry Kleiner‘s Cry Tough (United Artists) opened in August 1959, when steamy, semi-nude sex scenes were all but absent from mainstream American films.

Cry Tough was mainly a crime film about Puerto Rican gang activity in Spanish Harlem, but between 39:00 and 43:53 there’s a fairly provocative bedroom scene between John Saxon, 23, and the Argentinian actress Linda Cristal, 28.

Saxon and Cristal died almost exactly a month apart in 2020 — 7.25.20 and 6.27.20 respectively.

Kleiner’s screenplay is based on Irving Shulman’s 1949 novel of the same name, which was about a Jewish Brooklyn gang.

/>

Finessed synopsis: “Fanny (Lou de Laage) and Jean (Melvil Poupaud) are an ideal couple: financially flush and professionally fulfilled, they live in a magnificent apartment in [one of] the high-end districts of Paris and seem to be as in love as [they were on] the first day they met.

”But when Fanny crosses, by chance, Alain (Niels Schneider), a former high school friend, she is immediately hooked. They see each other again, and, very quickly, get closer and closer…”

I’ve just watched the riveting, highly charged French-language trailer for Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance, but of course it has no English subtitles. Any bilinguals who could possibly help with an English-language transcript of the dialogue?

The trailer announces that Coup de Chance is opening in French-language territories on 9.27.23. It will probably be previewed in Venice or San Sebastian or perhaps both. As we speak no U.S. distributor has found the balls to release the film stateside. I will be attending the Telluride Film Festival a little less than three months hence. It goes without saying I would love to see Coup de Chance play there.

A couple of months ago I reported about an early April screening of Coup de Chance in Manhattan. Resturateur Keith McNally and columnist Roger Friedman raved. If another advance NYC screening is slated for sometime this summer, I’d sure like to attend!

…but chose the meat-cleaver approach instead.

According to “The Little Mermaid is Disney Propaganda,” a 6.5 Unherd article by Kat Rosenfeld, old-fashioned, shamefully un-woke Disney cartoons and animated features on Disney + “come affixed with a hectoring title card that you cannot fast forward through.”

“This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures,” it reads. “These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”

Instead of lopping off the racially offensive nine-seconds from its current streaming of The French Connection, Disney censors could have posted the following at the beginning of the film — another hectoring that couldn’t be fast-fowarded:

“This Oscar-winning film, initially released in 1971, includes negative depictions and/or mistreatments of African Americans. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”

Why didn’t Disney simply choose this option? Nobody would’ve squawked if they had.

Here are 12 bullet points about the recently discovered removal of a brief, first-act passage in William Friedkin‘s The French Connection (’71), or more precisely in the Criterion Channel’s streaming of same.

1. The absence of this sequence can be confirmed by anyone who streams the Criterion Channel’s version of the Oscar-winning feature. The messed-with sequence begins at the 9:42 mark, during the film’s first act. Gene Hackman‘s Popeye Doyle enters the brightly-lighted main lobby of the police station. He drops off paperwork, puts on his overcoat, walks over to the main door and flexes his hand. Roy Scheider‘s Cloudy follows but at exactly 10:05 a passage that used to be part of the film is no longer there.

2. It’s a bit between Doyle and Cloudy, who’s nursing a wounded arm after being stabbed by a drug dealer. Doyle: “You dumb guinea.” Cloudy: “How the hell did I know he had a knife?” Doyle: “Never trust a [ethnic slur].” Cloudy: “He coulda been white.” Doyle: “Never trust anyone.”

3a. The nine-second sequence (:52 to :59 in the below video) was obviously censored over Doyle’s racially offensive dialogue, specifically the N-word.

3b. It is presumed that the sequence was removed by Disney, which bought the film’s original owner, 20th Century Fox, on 3.20.19, and not The Criterion Channel.

4. The absence of said passage was also reportedly evident when The French Connection was screened at the American Cinematheque’s Aero theatre on Friday, 5.12.23. HE commenter identified as “The Connection”: “I don’t know if anyone else complained. I should have said something to the manager as I was leaving, but I sent them an email the next day asking who changed it (themselves? the studio? the filmmaker?) and [that] in the future they [should] at least advertise that they’re showing an altered version. Since Criterion is now showing the same version, I’m assuming it was the studio, and I wonder if the Aero was even aware of the change.”

5. HE commenter “Gus Petch” (posted Sunday night): “I have multiple recordings of the movie on my DVR. The versions recorded off TCM 4 and 2 months ago are both the censored versions, but the versions recorded off FXM (Fox Movies) 8 months ago are uncensored. Also FWIW, the TCM versions did not have the title screen in front that you often see that the film has been modified for presentation on TV.”

6. HE commenter “Ken Koc” (posted Sunday night): “That [nine-second sequence] is also gone from my purchased copy of The French Connection on iTunes.”

7. It is nonetheless astonishing that the Criterion Channel is running this version of Friedkin’s Oscar-winning film (Best Picture, Hackman for Best Actor, Friedkin for Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay) without an explanation of some sort. This deletion seriously harms the Criterion brand, which has always been about honoring and representing the original artistic intentions of filmmakers. They need to address this issue ASAP.

8. If in fact Disney is responsible for deleting the nine seconds of footage, they owe an explanation to the film’s fans as well as the industry at large why this was done, and whether or not they consulted Friedkin before doing so, and if they intend to delete other portions of other films that feature the N-word.

9. Over the last couple of days I’ve sent emails to various directors and producers, asking them to please forward yesterday’s HE story about the French Connection censorship to Friedkin. I’m presuming that Friedkin would hit the ceiling when he learns of this, and will post some kind of protest statement or perhaps even a video.