8 Times Movie Censorship Backfired

William Friedkin's The French Connection is one of many masterpieces the late, great filmmaker crafted over the 1970s and '80s. A gritty police drama starring Gene Hackman in arguably his most iconic performance, the film took home three Academy Awards and is widely considered one of the defining pictures of the New Hollywood era.

The French Connection was one of many films that got hoovered up by Disney when the Mouse House purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019. There were plenty of anxieties over what would become of Fox's library, mainly due to Disney's seeming lack of commitment to film preservation, among other things. That said, it seemed as if Disney was content to leave well enough alone, with The French Connection one of many Fox movies to find a home on the company's streaming service, Disney+.

Sadly, that doesn't seem to have been the case. Earlier in 2023, viewers based in the U.S. noted that The French Connection had been censored on both The Criterion Channel and Disney+, with digital copies also receiving the change in question. The offending scene? A moment where Popeye (Hackman) uses a racial slur when talking to Cloudy (Roy Scheider) before they head out for the evening. This moment has been jarringly removed for American viewers, but - perhaps bizarrely - has been left undisturbed in the UK and Europe (at least at the time of writing).

Unsurprisingly, the removal of the moment in question sparked a significant backlash, with many rightly (and, some in full crank mode, disingenuously) questioning why the dialogue had been cut. Popeye and Cloudy are not meant to be nice men, and the scene in question emphasises the casual ugliness of their brand of policing. Such a change undermines the original vision of The French Connection, and raises awkward questions that have yet to be answered - namely, who implemented the change, and if it will ever be reversed.

In any case, the removal of the dialogue led to a surge in purchases of The French Connection Blu-ray, with the risk being that new printings may also include the incongruous removal of the aforementioned scene.