It seems it may have been Friedkin himself who requested this edit:
> response i got from criterion: “THE FRENCH CONNECTION is a 20th Century Fox film title that we have under license from Disney, its current owners. This is the only version that has ever been available to us for streaming. The question you raise has come up when we have played the film in the past, and according to our licensor, this is a “Director's Edit” of the film.”
> response i got from criterion: “THE FRENCH CONNECTION is a 20th Century Fox film title that we have under license from Disney, its current owners. This is the only version that has ever been available to us for streaming. The question you raise has come up when we have played the film in the past, and according to our licensor, this is a “Director's Edit” of the film.”
https://old.reddit.com/r/criterion/comments/1422hx0/criterio...
It wouldn't be the first controversial change he's made to the movie. Here he is talking about color correction he did on the Bluray release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6le-ginceM
Some reviews of that decision:
https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1916/frenchconnection.html
https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/6665/french_connection_rema...