Based on Robin Moore's 1969 nonfiction book of the same name, The French Connection follows a pair of New York City police officers, Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo (Roy Scheider), who are hot on the trail of a large shipment of narcotics. Once they glean a bit of intelligence from one of their informants, they find themselves in pursuit of both the potential buyers (Tony Lo Bianco, Arlene Farber, & Harold Gary) and the seller, Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). Doyle's tactics may be of questionable morality, and his instincts on such matters are only occasionally right on, but he is given the go-ahead to further pursue his suspects. Eventually, Doyle and Charnier find themselves in a low-tech battle of wits as the suspected narcotics dealer eludes his pursuer at every turn -- and ultimately decides to employ more aggressive tactics against the dedicated officer.

This film was originally set up at National General Pictures before eventually getting dropped. Producers Richard Zanuck and David offered to make it at 20th Century Fox with a production budget of $1,500,000. When director William Friedkin came on board to helm it, he decided to go for a documentary-like realism in his approach. He was influenced to go in that direction from having seen a 1969 french film titled Z.

After premiering in Los Angeles a couple days earlier, The French Connection was released in movie theaters nationwide on October 9th, 1971. It was able to gross over $51,700,000 at the worldwide box office on a budget of $1,800,000, making it the third highest-grossing release of that year. On April 10th, 1972, the film ended up winning 5 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (William Friedkin), Best Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Tidyman), and Best Film Editing. In the years since, The French Connection has not only been considered to be one of the most influential movies of the 1970s, but also one of the greatest films of all time.