"The Naked City, circa 1971"
Directed by William Friedkin (
To Live and Die In LA (1987).
This film is one of Noirsville's favorites. If you are a "Visual" Noir junkie, this Neo Noir will cream your jeans. It took two big city boys to bring it off. The "eyes" of Chicago native Friedkin and those of Brooklyn born Owen Roizman (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) whose outstanding guerilla style cinematography really captures the zeitgeist of late 60s early 70s New York City. This is the genuine article.
Some of what I wrote about The Naked City (1948) is germane here. "It's the real deal, shot on the sidewalks, the streets, the neighborhoods, the els, the bridges of New York City. They used real New Yorkers as extras, playing what else, real New Yorkers. It's a film loaded with New York City archetypes some frozen in time others now long gone." There's a lot of Brooklyn and Manhattan on display in its "Dawning of the age of Aquarius" garbage strewn glory, and on top of all that it's also a Christmas Noir. How about that?
I was born just a few years after The Naked City was released. This is the New York City of my youth and I knew it well. Between 1964 and 1970 I spent five to six days a week riding into Manhattan from Queens mostly on bus and subway. There was no gentrification yet. If you could only add in the wafting aromas of Italian bakeries and pizza parlors. The old sweaty sox smell of Jewish delis. The "sour" sauerkraut of corner hot dog wagons. Roasting chestnuts. The mix of steamed rice, soy, caramelized sugars, smoke and high temperature frying from Chinese restaurants. The taxi / limo / and diesel truck exhausts, with the ambient smell of low tide and the stink of rotting garbage. Plus the bite of brisk cutting breezes through concrete canyons on exposed skin to make it a complete emersion.
The film was written by Ernest Tidyman and based loosely on Robin Moore's 1969 book. Moore's non fiction book chronicles a chapter of Edward R. Egan's career with the NYPD that went down in 1961. He along with his partner Sonny Grosso (and other NYPD detectives of the Narc squad) broke up an organized crime ring, and seized 112 pounds of pure heroin. It was a record amount at the time.
The great "Crime Jazz" score with some exciting discordant piano pieces was by Don Ellis.
The film stars Gene Hackman (Night Moves, The Conversation, Unforgiven, as Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, Fernando Rey (Viridana, Villa Rides, Compañeros, Seven Beauties, That Obscure Object of Desire) as Alain "Frog One" Charnier, Roy Scheider (Romeo Is Bleeding) as Detective Buddy "Cloudy" Russo, Tony Lo Bianco (The Honeymoon Killers,
The Seven-Ups,
) as Salvatore "Sal" Boca, Marcel Bozzuffi (The Sleeping Car Murders) as Pierre "Frog Two" Nicoli, Frédéric de Pasquale as Henri Devereaux, Bill Hickman (stunt driver) as FBI Agent Bill Mulderig, Ann Rebbot as Mrs. Marie Charnier, Harold Gary as Joel Weinstock, Arlene Farber as Angie Boca, Eddie Egan as Captain Walt Simonson, André Ernotte as La Valle French police, Sonny Grosso as FBI Agent Clyde Klein, Alan Weeks as Pusher, Benny Marino as Lou Boca,
and The Three Degrees.
The story begins in Marseille. Alain Charnier, an ex longshoreman crane operator, has worked himself up to the top of a heroin smuggling operation. He lives with his gal pal in a villa along Mediterranean. However La Valle a French Sûreté nationale inspector has been tailing Charnier and recording all of his comings and goings. He is becoming a nuisance and Charnier instructs Pierre Nicoli, his enforcer, to get rid of him.
We follow the inspector at the end of his day. He's holding the evening paper. He grabs a loaf of bread to go with dinner and to nibble on it.
He heads into the foyer of his apartment house. You can hear a TV blaring in someone's flop. Nicoli guns La Valle down in his own hallway as he is checking his mail.
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| Marcel Bozzuffi as Pierre "Frog Two" Nicoli |
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| Oh Shit |
He shoots him right in the face. Boom! La Valle drops with scarlet ribbons in his hair. The TV is still blaring. Nobody in any of the apartments opens a door. Nicoli steps over his body and nonchalantly rips off the end of the inspectors loaf of bread that still somewhat tucked under his arm. Nicoli takes a bite before disappearing out the door. Nice gallic touch.
With the nosey inspector out of the way Charnier, puts his grand plan of smuggling 120 pounds of pure heroin into the US. The "H" is going to be hidden in a 1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III, that is registered to a French TV star Henri Devereaux who is going to shoot a film in New York City. He is bringing his car over by ship. It should be cake.
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| Gene Hackman as Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle |
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| Roy Scheider as Detective Buddy "Cloudy" Russo |
Meanwhile back in New York City Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, and Detective Buddy "Cloudy" Russo are in a stakeout under an el in Brooklyn. The are watching the Oasis Bar and Grill, looking for a weed pushing suspect.
Doyle is a Salvation Army Santa. While Russo is pretending to sell frankfurters out of a dog wagon. Doyle is entertaining two cute black kids with the usual Santa talk, while keeping an eye out for their man to show.
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| Looking in the window of the Oasis and spotting the suspect making a pot sale |
When Doyle spots the black kid with the afro who sells weed. He starts ringing his bell and singing Jingle Bells. It's the "go" signal to Russo who runs into the bar. The seller U-turn's around the back of the bar and runs out of the front door. Doyle takes after him and he and Russo corner him in a shop entrance. He pulls a knife, cuts Russo, and again runs off down the street.
Doyle and Russo in hot pursuit run him down in an alley. They dish out a little police brutality that morphs into the good cop bad cop routine. Russo is the good. They get the address of his supplier out of the pusher. They bust him for three bags of weed. A bullshit collar. But it's highly entertaining and ends with the now classic "Pick your feet in Poughkeepsie" sequence.
It's a nice juxtaposition between old world laid back continental atmosphere of Marseille and the energized buzz of New York City in the Sixties. And by Sixties we define the era as roughly between 1964 to 1976.
The "pick your feet in Poughkeepsie" bust
Doyle and Russo unwind at the Copacabana. The Three Degrees a good Supremes / Motown sound clone performs. (The girl groups biggest success was in the UK., BTW) Doyle makes the rounds and chats up a barmaid he knows while Russo drinks at the bar.
While back sitting at the bar boozing it up with Russo, Doyle spots Salvatore "Sal" Boca and his almost jail bait wife, Angie. They are schmoozing it up with the Manhattan crime family wise guys who push narcotics. Doyle besides doing his job, wants to play hid the sausage with Angie.
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| Salvatore "Sal" Boca and wife, Angie |
Interesting. Doyle and Russo decide to tail Boca and Angie. It goes on all night. From the Copa to Times Square to Ratner's on the Lower East Side, back to Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge then finally in the early morning to, Bushwick, where their hole-in-the wall lunch counter business, Sal and Angie's sits.
This whole sequence, with it's Crime Jazz" piece accompaniment by Don Ellis plays like a Noir Music Video, cool stuff.
The Boca Tail
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| Times Square heading South on Broadway |
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| Ratner's Restaurant, 138 Delancey Street, Manhattan |
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| The Williamsburg Bridge - Lower East Side Manhattan |
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| Brooklyn Bridge |
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| Tail Fins |
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| Sal & Angie's at 91 Wyckoff Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn |
The police procedural nature of the film provides more of these musical interludes. There's another one on a stake out later of the 1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III suspected of holding smuggled heroin, and of course a nice manic jazz piece for the infamous car vs subway train chase under the Bensonhurst el on Brooklyn's Stillwell Avenue Line.
The French "connection" is what Doyle and Russo eventually stumble upon doing their off hour "hobby" stalking of Sal and Angie. They discover that a big heroin shipment is headed to NYC in the very near future. Doyle and Russo talk their supervisor into getting a court ordered wiretap on Boca's phones, and two Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) agents Mulderig and Klein are brought in to assist.
In Classic Noir fashion Doyle becomes overly obsessed in capturing Charnier aka Frog One, after Frog Two, Nicoli tries to assassinate him with a snipers rifle. It goes a bit Noirsville.
Noirsville New York City
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| Benny Marino as Lou Boca |
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| Wire Tap |
Screencaps are from an online streamer. This is a 10/10 that hits on all cylinders a time machine to the end of the sixties.
Excellent review ....... classic NYC detective noir
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