With recent news that Disney, as current owner of the 20th Century Fox library, has censored Best Picture Oscar-winning police drama The French Connection across all streaming and TV broadcast outlets, fans and collectors have run to buy up uncensored physical media copies of the film wherever they can find them. Doing so will encounter two problems. First, Blu-ray editions of The French Connection are currently out of print, and speculators are taking advantage of the situation by asking ridiculous prices on eBay and other markets. Second, and most importantly, The French Connection was released on Blu-ray twice, and the first copy was a disaster you’ll really want to avoid.

For the benefit of those who weren’t collecting or paying attention to Blu-rays at the time, or at least not to The French Connection specifically, I’ll summarize what happened:

The 2009 Blu-ray

In 2009, 20th Century Fox released The French Connection on Blu-ray with a new video master supervised and approved by director William Friedkin. This should have been a good thing. Unfortunately, Friedkin lost his marbles at that time and decided to drastically alter the color timing of the movie to give it what he termed “pastel” hues. This was a radical revision that looked nothing like The French Connection ever had before, not during its original theatrical release nor in any prior home video transfer. More to the point, it looked terrible, giving the movie a weird soft glow at odds with the gritty subject matter, and downright bizarre colors, including purple skin tones in many scenes.

In a supplemental featurette on the disc called Color Timing The French Connection, Friedkin raved about this process, swearing that it was absolutely how he always intended The French Connection to look. In interviews given to promote the release, he also declared that he wanted all of his films to look that way (he’d already subjected a DVD edition of The Boys in the Band to the same treatment), and would be doing it to The Exorcist next.

This left just about everyone who watched the disc aghast, not the least of whom included cinematographer Owen Roizman, who had photographed both The French Connection and The Exorcist for Friedkin, and called the new color timing “atrocious.” That led to a public war of words between the two men, in which Roizman was very clear that Friedkin was not being truthful about how he wanted The French Connection to look in 1971, and Friedkin in turn implied that Roizman was incompetent and had no idea what he was talking about.

The 2012 Filmmakers Signature Series Blu-ray

The feud between Friedkin and Roizman was very messy, but did eventually get resolved. The two men mended fences and agreed to collaborate on the Blu-ray edition of The Exorcist, which was released by Warner Bros. in 2010 with totally reasonable colors and none of Friedkin’s “pastel” nonsense.

In 2012, Fox quietly reissued The French Connection in a new Blu-ray edition called the Filmmakers Signature Series, exclusive to the Best Buy retail chain. Citing approval by both William Friedkin and Owen Roizman, the new disc featured remastered video that stripped out all of the “pastel” revisionism and returned the movie to a much more sensible appearance.

At the time this happened, Friedkin changed his tune and insisted that the prior Blu-ray had been entirely a screw-up by someone at the studio and was never what he wanted. Never mind that he’d been captured on camera in the Color Timing featurette (conveniently omitted from the re-release) watching the “pastel” master and praising it to high heavens.

How Bad Could a Little Color Difference Be, Anyway?

This bad.

Personally, I feel that the Filmmakers Signature Series disc still has some color issues, just different color issues than the last Blu-ray. Colors in bright scenes are a little oversaturated, and the master has a frustrating green push that I don’t care for.

Nevertheless, I can’t imagine how anyone could defend the 2009 disc’s crazy purple tint. The remaster is a huge improvement overall and, at this time, remains the best available copy of the movie to own.

2023 Censorship

All this brouhaha over The French Connection blew over more than a decade ago, and the matter seemed to be settled. Sadly, it came to the fore again in 2023 when Disney (which acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019) was caught censoring the film by cutting footage from a scene in which Gene Hackman’s character says the n- word. This change has occurred across all streaming copies, including the Criterion Channel, and on recent cable TV broadcasts on TCM. Even Digital Copies that viewers had purchased in the past from retailers such as iTunes have now been updated to the new censored version.

Regrettably, removing this line misses the point of the scene entirely. Hackman’s character in the film was fully intended to be an abusive bigot, and his blurting of that word was acknowledgement and confirmation of something that audiences of the day (especially Black audiences) had already known – that New York City cops were racist. Removing it actually makes the film more problematic, in that it softens the character and makes his terrible behavior seem less objectionable.

I can only hope that Disney eventually realizes the error of this decision and returns the film to its original version that won the Best Picture Oscar in 1972. I’m just not sure that I have a lot of optimism for that.

In the meantime, the only way to watch the original, uncensored version of The French Connection is to do so from a physical media copy on DVD or Blu-ray. The best of those is the 2012 Filmmakers Signature Series Blu-ray. The earlier Blu-ray from 2009 should be avoided if possible, and you should certainly not spend a lot of money on it if you value anything about the art of motion picture photography.

Additional Notes

• The 1975 sequel French Connection II was directed by John Frankenheimer with no involvement from William Friedkin. As such, its 2009 Blu-ray release was spared from Friedkin’s “pastel” treatment.
• To my knowledge, only The Boys in the Band and The French Connection were subjected to the “pastel” revisionism. Blu-ray editions of Friedkin’s other movies should be unaffected.
• Owen Roizman passed away in January of this year at age 86.

Late Addendum

• William Friedkin also passed away on August 7, 2023, at age 87.

Related

• Cruising (1980)
• Jade (1995)
• The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023)