The French Connection.

This post contains spoilers regarding the conclusion of the movie The French Connection II so if you have not seen the movie and it’s on your list, quit now.

The original The French Connection was released in 1971 and was directed by William Friedkin. Famous for its car chase under the elevated subway, it’s a far lighter movie than its 1975 successor, directed by John Frankenheimer. Both movies address the smuggling of heroin through the French port of Marseille and the sequel has some truly horrifying footage of a heroin addicted Gene Hackman nearly dying from his captors’ ministrations.

Suffice it to say that the last ten seconds of the second movie are some of the most dramatic on film, culminating in the death of the drug kingpin Alain Charnier, splendidly acted in both movies by the distinguished Spanish actor Fernando Rey.

Montpellier to Marseille.

My son Winston spent an extended sojourn in France during the first half of the year, extending his French studies with a tour of Europe, centered in the beautiful ancient town of Montpellier, some 70 miles west of Marseille on the Mediterranean Sea, and he came up with the idea of finding the exact location from which Hackman fires the deadly shots at the evil Charnier. He did this using his memory of the documentary style ending, no GPS involved, but his image of the shooter’s location comes with GPS data courtesy of the iPhone he used. This is from the shooter’s viewpoint, though Charnier’s luxury yacht is missing:

Winston’s image of Charnier’s location.

And here are the exact coordinates:

The site of the climactic closing seconds of the movie.

Tremendous fun and encomiums to Winston for his diligent tracing of a great movie location.

Hackman, as ‘Popeye Doyle’, fires the killing shots.

English gangsters..

The night club scene of 1960s London was dominated by two gangster brothers, the Kray Twins. Identical twins, Ronnie was seriously insane and Reggie just a tad less so. Each committed murders in public and ended up serving a life sentence in gaol.

Reggie and Ronnie Kray by David Bailey, 1965

While the brothers established a measure of respectability after opening an upper class night club which was a magnet to the knobs and actors of the time, they inevitably returned to their roots of psychotic violence and mayhem, their empire ending once they were incarcerated.

David Bailey’s superb portrait of the pair pulls no punches. They are in your face, the submissive Reggie and the dominant Ronnie looking ready to lay about them with whatever weapon came to hand. Bottle, lead pipe, knife, sword (!), gun. You name it. They were not fussy. Bailey grew up in the same poor East End of London as the Krays so he will have been particularly attuned to their make up. It shows.

Two excellent movies have been made about the Twins. The deeper psychological portrait is to be found in The Krays where the Kemp brothers from the rock group Spandau Ballet deliver insightful performances. The more recent offering, Legend, sees Tom Hardy deliver a tour de force performance, acting both brothers. The script is less nuanced but the movie is worth watching for Hardy alone.

Bailey’s picture haunts me to this day. The other week I was taking some studio portraits of a pair of Welsh Terriers owned by friends and, well, I couldn’t help but plagiarize Bailey’s composition. Buckley, the male at left is clearly submissive, while Tilly, the female is the dominant one of the pair.

Buckley and Tilly, the Welsh Terriers.
Nikon D800, 16-35mm AF-S Nikkor, Novatron strobes.

Welsh Terriers were bred to flush out badgers whose setts (underground homes) would cause foxhunting horses to break legs. You probably should not mess with these boys any more than you would with the Kray Twins.