The Camerawork In The French Connection Is Outstanding, The Characters Less So

Praise must be given to The French Connection for its boldly bleak ending. This 1971 feature from director William Friedkin has a gangbuster conclusion that dares to allow key plot points to go unresolved, for good to not triumph over evil and for our lead character to be sucked into his own mental abyss.  It's a daring way to close out the proceedings and its mighty well-executed, however, such a capper does not remove all the shortcomings previously seen in The French Connection, which ends up being a movie that's more successful in terms of camerawork than it is at character work.

The Last Picture Show Fully Commits To A Melancholy Tone, Resulting In A Haunting Movie

Teenagers finally got to be widely recognized as a source of both revenue and storytelling in American pop culture in the 1950's which meant, because nostalgia is such a cornerstone of our pop culture. it was only a matter of time before art depicting teenagers inhabiting that specific pivotal era were created. The 1970's were bursting with pop culture that depicted teenager characters getting into adventures from Grease to Happy Days (American Graffiti was another 1970's pop culture entity that exploited nostalgia for teenage years, though that one was set in the 1960's). Most of these films were upbeat happy-go-lucky fare that looked back on 1950's teenagers with rose-colored glasses.