On The French Connection's Censorship

Рет қаралды 23,003

9 ай бұрын

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The recent passing of New Hollywood auteur William Friedkin had me thinking of The French Connection, my favourite film from the great director's body of work. Unfortunately, thinking about The French Connection also got me thinking about The French Connection's censorship. First discovered streaming on Criterion Channel, a new version of the film which deletes a brief dialogue exchange has been in circulation. In this video essay, I discuss that cut and why it's significant.
Filmography: letterboxd.com/eyebrowcinema/...
Works Cited:
"'Who Censored The French Connection?' is a Case Only Popeye Doyle Could Solve." Glenn Kenny, Decider. 2023. decider.com/2023/06/20/who-ce...
"The French Connection has been censored and fans are furious." Elizabeth Audrey, NME. 2023. www.nme.com/news/film/the-fre...
"Don't Censor Racism Out of the Past." Thomas Chatterton Williams, The Atlantic. 2023. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...
"The French Connection and the Trouble with Streaming Censorship." Stephen Daisley, The Spectator. 2023. www.spectator.co.uk/article/t...
"Why Disney Is Cutting Back on DVDs After 'Guardians of the Galaxy'." Brian Adgate, Forbes. 2023. www.forbes.com/sites/bradadga...
• Disney+ Splash Edited ...
• Video
• Disney Censorship Comp...
Music Featured:
Running Waters by Audionautix
Subterranean Howl by ELPHNT
Setup With An E by Small Colin
Both Flanks by Small Colin
Fingerprint by The Mini Vandals
Love Him by Loyalty Freak Music
A Gradual Descent into the Chamber of Darkness by Scott Lawlor
Lost Highway by Au.Ra
The Six Realms by I Think I Can Help You
The Take Down by DJ Williams
Running Waters by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Artist: audionautix.com/
Stock film footage: Film leader is run through a projector. Actual film transfer, not a digital creation. Courtesy of www.beachfrontbroll.com.
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Пікірлер: 263

@jwnj9716

That's what makes the 70s really interesting. The protagonists weren't the nicest guys. Yet, they were interesting enough to get you invested.

@Enriqueguiones

This brand of censorship will get worse... MUCH worse. It's the corporate way of doing things. We have to point it out. We have to criticize it. We have to raise our voices. Masterpieces like "The French Connection" MUST be preserved for future generations.

@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm

Someone really should make an essay about people's zero tolerance of bad words when they're perfectly fine with much worse actions.

@teddyfurstman1997

The French Connection being censored on the year William Friedkin died is gross.

@petertuite3885

Just checked my purchased version on apple & it’s edited. Disgraceful. I expect Django unchained now to be only the titles so 3 minutes long

@artofdrinking

Imagine if fellow Best Picture winner '12 years a slave' cut out all the racist language. Even the most left leaning people weren't asking for this censorship.

@guyvizard549

Never trust a corporation.

@thomascoughlan5894

Excellent essay. Who do Disney think they are trying to protect? Any half intelligent adult can figure out that Popeye Doyle may be the protagonist but that doesn't mean he's the hero.

@fredo1070

This is a classic case of a film showing racism, the film is not racist in itself. Friedkin describes Popeye Doyle in his director's commentary as an obsessive racist. Gene Hackman a Liberal hated saying that word, he didn't really like the character of Doyle. Thank the maker, Disney hasn't got its hands on Blazing Saddles. And remember how we used to laugh when they changed the swear words in the TV versions of films, Scarface being the most hilarious example.

@scalzmoney

Why on earth did they hack out those seconds of picture? Why not just mute the audio for 1/2 a second? This is bad censorship badly done.

@tmrezzek5728

Doyle: "Never trust a ni**er." Cloudy: "He coulda been white!" Doyle: "Never trust ANYONE." In three lines it's emphasized that Doyle is racist with no self-control, Cloudy is more measured and balanced, and "Never trust anyone" is Doyle's mantra for being a cop. We find out all we need to know about the characters without a shitload of yakety-yak backstory clogging it up. And, yes, hang on to your physical media, folks!

@GregoryGiordano

This is why I started buying physical media of these re edited films. The upside is there are hundreds of VHS and DVD and Blu-ray of this film use on eBay.

@k9feline2

There's another bit of censorship in the current digital version. Not a cut scene, but a change in subtitles. After Charnier talks with Boca in DC he meets with Nicoli on a plane in a conversation in French with English subtitles. According to the original subtitles, Charnier refers to Doyle as, "That bastard who followed me to the subway." But in the current version, the subtitles read, "That man who followed me to the subway." That's another censorship change for the worse.

@andrewwilliford9068

I’ve been living in London and watched the film on Disney+ without a VPN shortly after the controversy over the censorship came out. I was flabbergasted to see that Disney+ itself didn’t censor that moment but apparently the Criterion Channel’s version did.

@scottwhittaker4959

In the theatrical version of Dirty Harry I recall the psycho using THAT word in order to get beat up better by the black dude he hired in order to frame Callahan for police brutality.

@samuelbarber6177

The best part is they didn’t even bother replacing it with anything like TV used to do, they just cut it.

@marcelodamm

This reminds me of the book "Cloud Atlas" where in a future timeline one character says that "Movies" were now called "Disneys". Congrats on the awesome video!

@APS221

I should point out that your "shoot an unarmed suspect in the back" comment at

@AcesAndNates

What you said about the Looney Tunes collectors edition setting the standard for re-releasing archaic media is absolutely spot on. I never put it together exactly why, but I always thought of that golden box set every time I think about how they so often “do it wrongly”, today.

@TomEyeTheSFMguy

I was two minutes and fourteen seconds into this video when I realized you were talking about "The French Connection" and not "The French Dispatch". I'll be watching the rest of this video from the Dunce's corner, if y'all don't mind.