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 TheFrenchConnection, 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 hugedeal, 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 “goodGermans” inthewokesenseofthatterm? 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 postedapieceaboutsame. 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.
HH to NWJ: “Corporations and individuals are well within their rights to cut films apart to their delight, you say Corporations are well within their rights to do many terrible things — so? Again, look at all the ink you’re spilling over insisting on the editorial rights of Disney whilst spilling essentially none about what’s happened to The French Connection (let alone why it’s happened).
“You would’ve made a fine useful idiot for the studios when they took Greed, The Magnificent Ambersons, Brazil, Dune, Margaret et. al. away from the filmmakers.
“I never again want to hear you bitch about this site needing to get back to talk of cinema, because you’ve revealed here how little you actually care about the artists who create that cinema and how quick you’re willing to make the sanctity of a filmmaker’s vision secondary to a semantic nitpicking that would help maintain your ideological entrenchment and not have to confront why this has happened/keeps happening.
“Why DO you think this happened, by the way? Why DO you think the studio chose to exercise its ‘rights’ in this case?
“Don’t ever again tell us Jeff has abandoned cinema when this is a far more egregious and repugnant abandonment by you.”
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!
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.”
“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.
“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. The deletion was apparently Disney’s doing, but Criterion can’t just sit idly by.
“Criterion’s streaming version of The French Connection needs to include a three-point statement, to wit: (a) the following film has been altered from its original state; and (b) is therefore not altogether the same film that opened in 1971 and subsequently won five Oscars, although (c) the alteration was not implemented by the Criterion Channel but by the Walt Disney Company, which owns the distribution rights to the film.”
Am I the only driver in the tristate area who has this rear bumper sticker on his vehicle? I’ve been studying rear bumpers in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York State for over a year now, and I’m pretty sure it’s just me. I never saw a JFK bumper sticker in Los Angeles either.
It’s possible, I suppose, that Danbury prosecutors could have refused to accept this situation and persisted in seeking appropriate punishment (i.e., stiff prison sentence, sizable fine) for the perpetrator in question, but at the end of the day he’d still be dead.
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 CriterionChannel’sstreaming 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.
I never know how to react to showbiz hagiography docs, which always seem to explore and celebrate the life of a famous person in the same way. They all say “this person didn’t lead an easy life and endured his/her share of challenges, sorrows and setbacks, but he/she was nonetheless fascinating and lovable and certainly admirable, hence this tribute doc about what an vivid and nourishing life he/she led…nourishing for all of us, really.”
I’m not saying that Being Mary Tyler Moore (Max, 5.26), a two-hour doc about the beloved star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the early to mid ’70s and costar of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early to mid ’60s, is dishonest or banal or sugar-coated — it’s a somewhat open-hearted, reasonably honest piece of polished portraiture as far as it goes. But it sure plays and feels like dozens of other such docs that I’ve seen over the years.
The intention is to make the longtime fan feel good about Moore’s life, and to reassure them that the person she seemed to be (or that she had been reported to be) all those years was more or less genuine, and confirm that the typical fan’s emotional investment in Moore was sensible and sound.
It succeeds in this effort, and I was more or less fine with the final import. I didn’t believe some of it. I knew it was downplaying the dark and thorny and emphasizing the sunny side-up, but that’s what docs like this do. But I believed a fair amount of it, and that was enough.
From my 1.25.17 obit: Poor Mary Tyler Moore has passed at age 80. Nine people out of ten will fondly recall her 16-year run (with a three-year gm my 1.25ap) in two hugely popular TV sitcoms, first as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show (’61 through ’66) and then Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (’70 through ’77). She was especially perfect in the latter series, doing that sunny, wholesome and vulnerable thing to full perfection and winning three Lead Actress Emmy awards in the bargain.
But to me Moore will always be Beth Jarrett, the emotionally frigid mom of Timothy Hutton and wife of Donald Sutherland in Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80) — one of the greatest screen villains in history and surely Moore’s finest role. If she had never done anything before or since, her portrayal of Beth the bitch (which resulted in a Best Actress nomination) would entitle her to a place of eternal honor in the annals of American cinema.
Feature-wise, Ordinary People was pretty much Moore’s career peak. She costarred in the not-so-hot Six Weeks (’82) and then Just Between Friends (’86). But then she rebounded as another high-strung bitchy type in David O. Russell‘s Flirting With Disaster (’96). Moore also costarred in Elvis Presley‘s last scripted film, Change of Habit, in which she played a work-clothes-wearing nun who allowed herself to develop romantic stirrings for The King.
Kenneth was born on 8.12.98, and was therefore, believe it or not, 29 when this photo was taken.
Kenneth reportedly gave Astor a new Packard as a wedding gift. They soon moved to a home on Lookout Mountain in Laurel Canyon. Less than two years later he was dead.
Initially a writer, editor and supervisor at Fox Films Corporation, Kenneth began directing films for Fox in ’29 — a year or so after his marriage. On 1.2.30, the 31-year-old was traumatically killed while directing aerial scenes for Such Men Are Dangerous. He and nine others were instantly destroyed following a mid-air plane crash over the Pacific Ocean. The planes that smashed into each other were identical Stinson SM-1F Detroiters. Sun glare was listed as probable cause.
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