The Christmas Connection

You probably know my love for The French Connection. What you might not know is that it is one of the movies I like to watch for Christmas. I consider it a Christmas movie, or to be more precise a Christmascrime film. I think I need to hashtag that term and make it a thing on social media. But I digress. The French Connection is a Christmas film because a good portion of it, from the beginning to its middle at least, is set around Christmastime. And main character Popeye Doyle is introduced wearing a Santa Claus costume, which is in itself an excellent reason. It happens in a scene that is both comical and yet genuinely immersive. Doyle comes off not as a joke, but like a driven cop ready to do what it takes to get his man. The chase and the subsequent interrogation scene are a piece of anthology and I am sharing it here for you to appreciate. For some people, Christmas is about Hans Gruber falling from Nakatomi Tower. For me, it's about Popeye Doyle dressed as Santa running after a drug dealer and not caring one bit about what he's wearing.

The French Connection for #Noirvember

It struck me that I haven't blogged much about #Noirvember and I thought I would do it today, very briefly. If you are looking for a crime movie to watch for the month, I would suggest The French Connection. Because it's a great film, but also because it is partially set near this time of year. It is one I try to watch every November. Its atmosphere just fits the month. Talking of atmosphere, listen to the music of the opening credit and tell me in the comments how Noir it made you feel afterwards:

The Greeks of The Wire

I was thinking about this post recently, and it struck me that the villains in The French Connection, especially Alain Charnier, inspired the The Greek criminal organisation in The Wire. Known as... The Greeks. Which is a bit of a misnomer, as while the leaders are Greek (or maybe not, see below) their staff is from various nationalities: from Ukraine, Israel, Eastern Europe. They control the port of Baltimore, and supply the country with stolen goods, alcohol, women and of course drugs.

Their leader is known as The Greek, an elderly man who runs his shadowy empire from a small café near the port, where he sits around, inconspicuous, never talking when there are visitors. His second-in-command is Spiros Vondas, played by Paul Ben-Victor. At the end of season 2, we learn the Spiros's real name is not Spiros, and that The Greek is not even Greek. I love these villains. They are the most amoral characters of the whole series, the most ruthless too, in a series not short of ruthless people. Under their shopkeeper appearances, they are brutal thugs. For them crime is merely a business which has to be conduct methodically and rationally. This is what makes them resilient, this is what makes them dangerous. You can see what I mean here, in a nutshell, by the way they murder a Turkish sailor. Pure malevolence. More popular shows have tried to make memorable villains, but I have yet to see villains as evil as The Greeks of The Wire.

Everybody gets to go to the moon

My readership knows my love for The French Connection. So this post/upload might not come as a surprise. It was only a question of time. So I thought about uploading a song here for this Friday, and this song came naturally to my mind.It is the only song I listened from The Three Degrees. I am a Philistine. They found fame with the movie. I found this fan-made clip, an homage to the movie, and I had to upload it on Vraie Fiction. I love how the upbeat track clashes with the grim, violent reality of the film. I hope you enjoy.

The detail that makes a great villain

I might as well confess it now: I have been trying to write crime fiction recently (an activity I started in November 2011). I managed to write one short story, one complete first draft anyway. (A side note: my problem with short stories is that I have difficulties to keep them short.) I did creative writing back in cégep and then at university, but this is different as I work in a special genre, which I know well as a reader but not as a wannabe writer (I say wannabe writer but right now I am just doing it for kicks).

One of the challenging bit is creating villains. I blogged about them before. In crime fiction, we have real life models to use, especially when your badguys are mobsters and thugs. Where I come from and where I take my working material from, i.e. the beautiful yet deeply crooked city of Montreal, real criminals come a dime a dozen. In a genre that often aims to realism, one would think he should stay away from the archetypes that quickly turn clichés: those villains with goatees in elegant evening suits or those brutish goons so frequent in pulp fiction. But I discovered as a reader of crime history that criminals often have this look, at least when it comes to thugs. I also discovered writing that the little element, the detail makes a badguy stand out: a nervous tick, a way to stand or to smoke a cigarette, or have a drink, or a way to smile. Fernando Rey playing Charnier in The French Connection was not the Southern French thug William Friedkin wanted (more about the casting here), but his way of carrying himself, always cool under pressure, whether trying to avoid being tailed by the police or dealing with New York mobsters, certainly made the character memorable and gave him an aura of menace. There was also the little details: the umbrella, the dark clothes and yes, the goatee. He looks like a scavenging crow, which is in essence what is a drug dealer. I am far from creating a character that memorable. But at least I know where to take inspiration from.

The Montreal Connection

This picture was taken in the Old Montreal, back in 2010. I am not sure why I uploaded it here for this post. Maybe I should have taken one of the Court House. it would have been more appropriate. But back in 2010, I obviously didn't know I was about to blog this post. I am reading this book (well, the French original), which I blogged about before. I was recently mentioning Donnie Brasco here, a movie about the infiltration of FBI agent Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco, into the Bonnano Family. I watched it two or three times, enjoyed it quite a lot, but I now want to watch it again. Because I discovered through the book that one of the massacre pictured in the movie was in fact perpetrated by a team of murderers from Montreal, which was only discovered years later. The Montreal mafia has been historically under the authority of the Bonnanos, so both cities are closely connected when it comes to organised crime.

And there is of course The French Connection, which I watched again on the plane going to Montreal. The real, historical French Connection was stopping at Montreal before going to the States. This is all very sinister, yet I cannot help but being fascinated. I feel that we have been robbed of our crime history, and by extension, of our crime fiction.

The French Connection (geeky anecdote)

Last Saturday, I had a craving for junk food (Wimpy) and I was in the mood to watch The French Connection. I watched the movie only once, about ten years ago, but recently I really want to watch it again. Maybe because it is set during Christmastime, because I have been reading on organised crime and it is a movie based on a true story. Anyway, I was in the mood to munch a big bad quaterpound with cheese, chips, Coca Cola while watching a classic movie. So I stopped at the local Blockbuster, looked for the movie in the renting section, the sale section, everywhere, I couldn't find it. I asked one of the staff members if he had it. He was tall and big, looking very geeky, and he was a geek: he actually knew the movie I was referring to. Not only this, he knew it had been released in DVDs and Blue Rays, he had seen it and it was "a fantastic movie". But unfortunately it was not available there.

That said, this little non-event, or frustrating non-event gave me hope in civilisation. That a man in such a low-paid, thankless job knew his movie classics and could talk about them with enthusiasm is definitely a sign that not everything is lost and that those movies will not be forgotten. It also shows that geeks are actually cool, knowledgeable creatures, in spite of their social ineptitude. And I count myself among them, without any shame. It also inspired me to put The French Connection on my Christmas gift list. With any luck I will be watching it on Christmas Day. My Christmas season movies may seem rather strange (you can read more about it here), but I think The French Connection fits the season perfectly. So I have decided to put the trailer here. It is a bit out of sync, but it is still enjoyable.