Sundance Cinema had a one-night showing of The French Connection, one of those classic American movies I’ve seen bits and pieces of for more than thirty years but have never watched from beginning to end, and especially not in a movie theater, so we motored across town after supper, plopped ourselves in a couple of the best seats in the theater and settled back for a night of high entertainment.

First off, good movie. If I ever knew Roy Scheider was in this movie, I forgot until I saw his name in the opening credits. This must have been before his Chief Brody days in Jaws, right? Because he looked like a kid. Then again, so did Gene Hackman. There, that’s out of the way.

Second: Man, Detroit built some big cars back in the day, didn’t they? A status snot driving a Hummer might think he’s behind the wheel of the biggest American car ever, but that’s nothing compared to the production model Ford Galaxie of the 1970s. Those monsters were forty feet long and had a bench seat big enough to field a game of beach volleyball.

Also: The stuff movie makers used for fake blood when this movie was shot looked like the bright, thick paint I used in elementary school. They splashed it on the way a fourth-grader would, too.

And then: The camerawork was so 70’s that it made my eyes hurt: jerky pans across city skylines, grainy low-light film for scenes of seedy bars and nightclubs, hand-held close-ups of perps trotting through crowds that were definitely not Steadicam. It looked like the late-night television shows I used to watch when I should have been doing my homework.