William Friedkin, a filmmaker whose gritty, visceral model and fascination with characters on the sting helped make “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” two of the largest box-office hits of the Nineteen Seventies, died on Monday at his dwelling within the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 87.

The trigger was coronary heart failure and pneumonia, mentioned his spouse, Sherry Lansing, the previous head of Paramount Footage in Hollywood. His loss of life got here simply weeks earlier than the discharge of his most up-to-date directorial effort, “The Caine Mutiny Courtroom-Martial,” a film based mostly on the Herman Wouk play.

Mr. Friedkin was a promising however not well-known director with a background in documentary Movie when he teamed up with the producer Philip D’Antoni to make “The French Connection,” based mostly on the true story of two swashbuckling New York Metropolis cops, Sonny Grosso and Eddie Egan, who broke up a global heroin-trafficking ring in 1961. The script was tailored from a ebook by Robin Moore.

Working with a modest funds, Mr. Friedkin and Mr. D’Antoni relied on a forged of relative unknowns. Roy Scheider, an Off Broadway actor, took the function of Mr. Grosso, known as Buddy Russo within the movie. Gene Hackman, whose modest credit included a small half in a giant movie, “Bonnie and Clyde,” and a giant half in a small movie, “I By no means Sang for My Father,” was employed to play his companion, Popeye Doyle, based mostly on Mr. Egan.

By sheer accident, Fernando Rey performed Alain Charnier, a personality based mostly on the worldwide drug kingpin Jean Jehan. Mr. Friedkin had needed Francisco Rabal, from the Luis Buñuel movie “Belle de Jour,” however his casting director confused the 2 actors.

Filmed on location in New York for lower than $2 million, or about $15 million in right this moment’s cash (the common Hollywood movie value $3 million on the time), “The French Connection” delivered visceral drama, documentary realism and edge-of-your-seat thrills. Popeye Doyle’s pursuit, in a commandeered automotive, of a hijacked elevated prepare in Brooklyn has usually been known as one of the best car-chase scene ever filmed.

“The French Connection” was launched in 1971 and dominated the Academy Awards the following yr, successful the Oscar for greatest image and incomes Mr. Friedkin one of the best director award. Mr. Hackman received for greatest actor in a number one function. The movie additionally received within the tailored screenplay and enhancing classes.

Mr. Friedkin adopted up a yr later with “The Exorcist,” based mostly on William Peter Blatty’s best-selling horror novel in regards to the demonic possession of a 12-year-old woman. Filmed largely on location within the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, it was a suspenseful, usually ugly, cinematic research of evil at work within the trendy world — evil conceived in nearly medieval phrases.

Linda Blair, because the possessed woman, gave a terrifying efficiency enhanced by eye-popping particular results. In a cinematic second that entered into legend, she spewed a jet of inexperienced vomit — truly a mix of oatmeal and pea soup — straight into the face of a priest performed by Jason Miller. Much more startling, in the course of the exorcism later within the movie, her head spun full circle on her shoulders, grinning maniacally.

The movie, launched in late December 1973, grew to become an outstanding hit, one in all Hollywood’s top-grossing motion pictures up to now, with ticket gross sales of greater than $200 million (the equal of about $1.3 billion right this moment). It was additionally the primary horror movie to be nominated for a greatest image Oscar. (It misplaced to “The Sting.”)

In New York, audiences lined up for hours within the freezing chilly, whereas scalpers offered tickets for 3 times their face worth. Vincent Canby, in The New York Occasions, dismissed the movie as “claptrap” however pronounced it “the largest factor to hit the business since Mary Pickford, popcorn, pornography and ‘The Godfather.’”

The ripple results from each movies lasted for many years. “The French Connection” injected realism and violence into hard-boiled thrillers just like the “Soiled Harry” movies and tv police collection like “Hill Avenue Blues,” whereas “The Exorcist” modified essential attitudes towards horror movies.

“Horror was a disreputable style, however Friedkin elevated it with the A-list remedy,” Peter Biskind, the writer of “Straightforward Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Intercourse-Medicine-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Era Saved Hollywood” (1998), mentioned in an interview for this obituary in 2016. “‘The Exorcist’ was so profitable that it paved the way in which for the gentrification of B motion pictures that has given us ‘Star Wars,’ the ‘Raiders of the Misplaced Ark’ cycle and the comic-book motion pictures we’ve got right this moment.”

William Friedkin, recognized to his buddies as Billy, was born in Chicago on Aug. 25, 1935, to Louis and Rachel (Inexperienced) Friedkin. Each mother and father have been Jews who had left Ukraine early within the century with their households to flee the tsarist pogroms. His mom, who was often known as Rae, was an working room nurse; his father labored a wide range of low-paying jobs.

After graduating from Senn Excessive Faculty on Chicago’s North Facet in 1953, Mr. Friedkin took a job within the mailroom of the native tv station WGN. Inside a couple of years he had labored his means as much as director, turning out tons of of exhibits, from “Bozo’s Circus” to dwell performances of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in addition to documentaries.

His documentary work coincided with the appearance of moveable cameras, a decisive affect on his model. “I realized on gear that nearly begged so that you can rise up and transfer round,” he instructed Gene Siskel, the movie critic for The Chicago Tribune, in 1980.

After his documentary “The Folks vs. Paul Crump,” a few death-row prisoner within the Cook dinner County Jail, received the grand prize on the San Francisco Movie Competition in 1962, Mr. Friedkin went to work in Los Angeles for David Wolper, a producer of documentaries for all three tv networks.

Mr. Friedkin’s first task as a feature-film director was a Sonny and Cher car, “Good Occasions” (1967), which galvanized critics with its cheery bounce and ingenious digicam work. He adopted with “The Birthday Get together” (1968), a movie model of the Harold Pinter play, with Robert Shaw within the lead function, and “The Evening They Raided Minsky’s” (1968), an odd knockabout interval piece in regards to the burlesque period. He returned to theatrical supply materials with “The Boys within the Band” (1970), Mart Crowley’s Off Broadway hit about seven homosexual buddies reflecting on their lives and loves.

“The French Connection” was rejected by each studio on the town earlier than Richard Zanuck, in his ultimate days at twentieth Century Fox, gave it the inexperienced mild. Satisfied that the movie required a street-level documentary really feel, Mr. Friedkin spent weeks on the beat with the 2 cops who had damaged the French Connection drug case. He mentioned he paid an official on the New York Transit Authority a $40,000 bribe to miss the principles and permit the well-known chase sequence to be filmed.

After “The French Connection” received 5 Oscars and “The Exorcist” grew to become an unlimited box-office success, Mr. Friedkin discovered himself some of the sought-after administrators in Hollywood.

A turbulent interval ensued. He remade “The Wages of Worry,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s basic 1953 thriller about drifters driving truckloads of nitroglycerin over rugged terrain, as “Sorcerer” (1977), with Mr. Scheider within the half initially performed by Yves Montand. Most critics discovered it lengthy, labored and never significantly thrilling. It was launched across the identical time as “Star Wars” and died a fast loss of life.

He later known as “Sorcerer,” in an interview with Indiewire in 2017, “the one movie I’ve made that I can nonetheless watch.”

The lurid “Cruising” (1980), with Al Pacino as a New York Metropolis detective who goes undercover within the metropolis’s homosexual S-and-M bars to unravel a homicide, aroused the fierce opposition of homosexual activists, who objected to the movie’s portrayal of homosexual males and who picketed the placement shoots, a lot to Mr. Friedkin’s dismay.

That movie was the primary in a collection of flops that included “Deal of the Century” (1983), a farce about arms sellers, with Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines and Sigourney Weaver, and the critically reviled “Jade” (1995), a homicide thriller with a script by Joe Eszterhas and with Linda Fiorentino and David Caruso within the starring roles. Alongside the way in which, Mr. Friedkin managed one thing like a return to type with “To Dwell and Die in L.A.” (1985), an atmospheric noir a few Secret Service agent in search of to avenge the loss of life of his companion.

“The paradox of William Friedkin is that he made solely two actually good movies, ‘The French Connection’ and ‘The Exorcist,’” Mr. Biskind mentioned. “There are others which are fascinating however deeply flawed. However these two movies had an outsize affect.”

Mr. Friedkin married Ms. Lansing in 1991. She was the chairman and chief govt of Paramount Footage from 1992 to 2005. His first three marriages — to the actresses Jeanne Moreau and Lesley-Anne Down and the tv information anchor Kelly Lange — led to divorce. Along with Ms. Lansing, he’s survived by two sons, Jackson and Cedric.

After years within the skilled wilderness, Mr. Friedkin received constructive opinions for 2 courtroom dramas: a 1997 tv remake of “Twelve Indignant Males,” with Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott and Hume Cronyn; and “Guidelines of Engagement” (2000), with Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.

He went on to direct a number of well-received small movies, two of them based mostly on performs by Tracy Letts: “Bug” (2006), a research in horror and delusion, and “Killer Joe” (2011), the sordid story of a murder-for-hire plot that takes an odd flip when the hit man, performed by Matthew McConaughey, enters the image.

In 2013, Mr. Friedkin was awarded a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement on the Venice Movie Competition. That very same yr, Harper printed his ebook “The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir.”

Late in his profession, he returned to acquainted territory with “The Satan and Father Amorth” (2017), a documentary account of an exorcism carried out in an Italian village by the Vatican’s chief exorcist.

His most up-to-date effort, “The Caine Mutiny Courtroom-Martial,” starring Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Clarke, may have its premier on the Venice Movie Competition, which begins on Aug. 30.

For all his groundbreaking work, Mr. Friedkin remained modest about it. “I don’t see myself as a pioneer,” he instructed The Impartial in 2012. “I see myself as a working man and that’s all, and that’s sufficient.”

Ashley Shannon Wu contributed reporting.