Director William Friedkin passed away earlier this month, but his legacy in film lives on. With a career spanning over 50 years and multiple Academy Awards, his movies re-defined more than one film genre. Yet his films are so enduring — so threatening to a Hollywood liberalism obsessed with ideological purity— that they could never be made today. Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” is terrifying and iconic, but its deeper themes often get overlooked as a mainstay of American pop culture.
Friedkin’s first breakthrough film was “The French Connection” (1971), which took home the Oscar for Best Picture. The gritty, detective thriller — where morality dictates a cop must go outside the law to fight crime — laid the foundation for countless crime films today. Street-level realism, the anti-hero cop, the explosive car…
