Released in 1974 and written/directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "The Conversation" is a potential crime drama starring Gene Hackman as a freelance surveillance technician in San Francisco whose team records a conversation by a man and woman (Cindy Williams & Frederic Forrest) as they walk through crowded Union Square. Using three different recordings of the event he expertly pieces together the conversation and tries to figure out its meaning. He fears that someone might be murdered over it, which haunts him from a past gig. Robert Duvall plays the client, a mogul of some sort, while Harrison Ford plays his dour assistant. Teri Garr has a small role.
While the movie was released after Watergate, the story was written in the mid-60s and the movie was completed several months before the scandal broke out. It was sorta prescient in that it used the very same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used to spy on their opponents.
This is a slow drama focused on the psychology of the privacy-obsessed protagonist and the meaning of a phrase on the recording, depending on which word is stressed. It's surprisingly engaging for being so uneventful (until the final act, that is). The way the revelations are depicted at the end show that this movie influenced others 25 years later, like 1999's "The Sixth Sense." But that film is more cogent with its revelations whereas "The Conversation" keeps everything somewhat ambiguous. Unfortunately, I didn't find Hackman's character interesting, like his characters in other films, e.g. 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" and 1969's "Downhill Racer." Nor did I find his acting convincing when he would stutter. And, as expert of a surveillance technician he is, he's blatantly bumbling in numerous others. I guess he's a metaphor for America, which was a technically rich superpower, but utterly stoo-pid in many ways (e.g. the Vietnam fiasco).
The film runs 113 minutes and was shot in San Francisco.
GRADE: B-
While the movie was released after Watergate, the story was written in the mid-60s and the movie was completed several months before the scandal broke out. It was sorta prescient in that it used the very same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used to spy on their opponents.
This is a slow drama focused on the psychology of the privacy-obsessed protagonist and the meaning of a phrase on the recording, depending on which word is stressed. It's surprisingly engaging for being so uneventful (until the final act, that is). The way the revelations are depicted at the end show that this movie influenced others 25 years later, like 1999's "The Sixth Sense." But that film is more cogent with its revelations whereas "The Conversation" keeps everything somewhat ambiguous. Unfortunately, I didn't find Hackman's character interesting, like his characters in other films, e.g. 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" and 1969's "Downhill Racer." Nor did I find his acting convincing when he would stutter. And, as expert of a surveillance technician he is, he's blatantly bumbling in numerous others. I guess he's a metaphor for America, which was a technically rich superpower, but utterly stoo-pid in many ways (e.g. the Vietnam fiasco).
The film runs 113 minutes and was shot in San Francisco.
GRADE: B-