Friedkin’s position does add certain peculiarities.

Film history is often written by the survivors and

victors, but when it comes to Hollywood history, and for some reason, especially in the 1970s, it often
does so by those who are part of the film industry itself. There’s a reason Peter Biskind’s gossipy Easy
Riders, Raging Bulls has become far too often the final telling on the subject, and it’s almost never taking
into account how every stupid aesthetic judgment in it comes from the author being a failed executive.
So quite a few Friedkin flops have been recuperated among the film enthusiasts (I’m very glad his film
maudit masterpiece Sorcerer has enjoyed a new life since its 2013 restoration), but the stink of failure
and the idea that his filmography boils down to his two major early 1970s hits The French Connection
and The Exorcist, and everything else can still be discounted as curiosity, if not pure shame, still shows up
far too often in more mainstream appraisals, as one can notice looking at some of the necrologies that
show up since yesterday. Of course, being known as “the director of The Exorcist” has its advantages,
and Friedkin himself made good on that by remaining involved in later releases and, more recently,
making a not-good documentary about a real-life exorcist called The Devil and Father Amorth. It’s hard
to deny that he deserves better than the moniker, and when he gets reduced to that in death, film
culture is failing him yet again.

I find The Exorcist a pretty good movie, but it is not quite one of my favorites. Friedkin is still the rare
filmmaker whose best work is usually among the ones people are more likely to have seen: The French
Connection, Sorcerer, Cruising, and To Live and Die in LA. Those five movies by themselves make for
quite a filmography, at the same time very exciting and upsetting, but there are a few worthwhile hidden
gems: a couple of slam dunks for late in his career, The Hunted and Bug, the very amiable heist comedy
The Brink’s Job, the messy but likable period piece The Night They Raided Minsky’s, his debut TV
documentary about a death row inmate, The People vs. Paul Crump. His filmography certainly has its
unevenness; he couldn’t always salvage bad projects (his first Hollywood movie Good Times has some
charm, but there’s nothing he could do to make up for Sonny Bono, unlike Cher, not being made for the
movies), and one sometimes suspects he might never try very hard (the less said about his Chevy Chase
comedy Deal of the Century the better).

After The French Connection made him famous, Friedkin mostly committed himself to pulp movies,
crime and horror in general, sometimes even blending them together (Cruising often feels like a
possession film). As a formalist, those movies more than offered him opportunity for exploration, but he
was also always attracted to stage or stage bound material that often gave him plenty of room to play
around film space. He went to England to make a quite good Harold Pinter adaptation, The Birthday
Party, and he was responsible for the film version of Matt Crowley’s The Boys in the Band with the
original cast. By the late 90s he did a much better than necessary 40th year anniversary version of 12
Angry Men for TNT and two Tracey Letts adaptations, the already mentioned Bug and Killer Joe. Those
movies mostly take place in enclosed spaces and make great use of Friedkin’s fluid camera and editing
instincts; they are usually tense and organized in a thriller manner. I can only assume the self-loathing
barbs of The Boys in the Band play a little less punishing when the cast is allowed to share a stage, but
they have a memorable, cutting quality as Friedkin breaks down their room through his blocking and
editing. Considering the nature of the material, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial probably follows a
similar path.

Friedkin’s work combines a facility with location shooting, a desire to include as much researched
material to anchor the drama as possible, and editing instincts that punch up and distort the action. It is
a very sensationalist approach built on a documentary-like foundation. All this pays off spectacularly in
The French Connection, a movie whose popularity was based on an incredible car chase that came from
the observation that he could get a car to follow a train in the streets of New York. There are many
commendable things about The French Connection, but it is above all a triumph of well-chosen, very
downbeat locations. I’ve always been partial to this description from Kent Jones 2005 appraisal of the
filmmaker: “like Abel Ferrara, Friedkin only makes movies in places Woody Allen would never dream of
visiting”.