French Connection if, which is about to leave the Sack 57 any minute, has very little in common with its predecessor. The original French Connection was made by that slickest of American directors, William Friedkin, and it was seductive stuff. It helped demonstrate, like Don Siegel's Dirty Harry, that Charles Bronson--like punch-'em-up movies, seemingly innocent if a bit violent, could be fascist. All they needed was a good director, and it was enough to scare you silly--not what happened on screen, but the way you were responding. These pictures didn't necessarily bring out the stormtrooper in you, but they did illustrate the awesomely manipulative power of well-fashioned celluloid.

But John Frankenheimer (Seven Days in May) made the sequel, and his style, while clumsier than Friedkin's, is at least not so sparkly. Now Gene Hackman can be more than a cog in a lulling machine (2 complex contraption with a cash register attached), and this new non-commercial version of the trials of Popeye Doyle in search of Frog One--a major supplier of New York's heroin--is therefore a great deal more interesting. Doyle was originally the kind of cop that would yank people out of phone booths and throw them out on their ear if he wanted to call headquarters. And while we were supposed to like him, his temper--the man pounding furiously on the expressionless subway door with his prey smug inside, and his brash lack of cool was supposed to make things more subtle. But it never really worked. When anti-heroin crusader Doyle busts a bellboy for a joint in his back pocket the filmmakers are testing the audience's sympathies too much. And all was subservient to the immortal Chase.

Here, however, Doyle's crudeness is transported to Marseilles and an alliance with the French gendarmerie, where it gets a chance to show what good old American vulgarity can really do. And the film is surprisingly serious about the usually cliched conflict between European urbanity and Doyle's simple "I'm an American and we're the best so fuck you" attitude. He proves his courage, yes, but he also makes a complete fool of himself--and, wonder of wonders in a picture like this--he shows monstrous inefficiency. Very un-American and very unpoheevian-like. He's much more loveable this way, and surrounded by Marseilles's exotic side-streets his vulnerability takes on a meaning lost in the mad avenues of New York.

Hackman's performance is fine, though not so Shakespearean as some have claimed. The withdrawal symptom scene (the villians capture him and turn him into an addict) did not turn out to be a spotlight for fancy-pants acting--they don't go on for too long, and at least he talks: Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues just sat and shivered miserably--one's reaction was "why am I watching this?" But Hackman moves through this film without straining--he's done better work before, and he seems to enjoy Doyle's character. His enunciation of various and Sunday disgusting expressions is done with as much relish and skill as Nicholson in The Last Detail. But it must be a sublime pleasure to stand in front of the cameras and yell swear words as hard as you can.

BRATTLE

Slaughterhouse Five, 6, 9:45; Fahrenheit 451, 7:50, tonight; Closely Watched Trains, 6:25, 9:30, WR-Mysteries of the Organism, 8 p.m., starting tomorrow.

CENTRAL II

Godfather 11, 6, 9:30, tonight; Shampoo, 6, 9:45, weekend at 2:15, The Last Detail, 8 p.m., weekend at 4:15, starting tomorrow.

HARVARD SQUARE

The Exorcist, 3:40, 7:45, The Devils, 1:45, 5:45, 9:45, tonight; Happy Hooker, 1, 4:30, 8 p.m., Barbarella, 2:45, 6:15, 9:45, starting tomorrow.

ORSON WELLES I

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 4, 5:35, 7:10, 8:45, 10:20.

ORSON WELLES II

Monlka, 4, 6:10, 9:25; The Silence, 5:30, 7:40, tonight; The Third Man, 4:10, 7:45, And Then There Were None, 6, 9:40.

ORSON WELLES III

Blazing Carrots, 4, 5:30, 7, 8:30, 10 p.m., tonight; Anais Nin Observed, 4, 7:15, 10:30, The Henry Miller Odyssey, 5:15, 8:30.