The Conversation

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Film Description

One of Coppola's greatest films, this dark and unsettling conspiracy thriller about surveillance and paranoia was released prior to the Watergate scandal breaking but must have seemed chillingly prescient. Hackman's astonishing performance as the obsessive, haunted Harry Caul is one of his very best.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Commentary - 1. Francis Ford Coppola - Director\ 2. Walter Murch - Editor\Sound\Featurette - 1. CLOSE UP ON 'THE CONVERSATION'\Original Trailer

Technical Details

Reviews & Articles

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Review by CJ on 2nd June 2000

Intimate and well crafted film about a professional surveillance expert who tracks down a young couple to record their conversations under the orders of a powerful businessman known as the Director. One of Coppola's greatest films, this dark and unsettling conspiracy thriller about surveillance and paranoia was released prior to the Watergate scandal breaking but must have seemed chillingly prescient. Hackman's astonishing performance as the obsessive, haunted Harry Caul ('the best bugger on the West Coast') is one of his very best, and the brilliant, Hitchcockian twist at the end provides a shocking and unforgettable denouement.

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Review by Richard Armstrong on 11th February 2002

Conceived well before and appearing in the wake of Watergate, at the time America’s gravest political crisis, The Conversation caught the paranoid mood of the mid-70s and sold it as an imaginative arthouse intrigue long before blue-eyed Robert Redford’s All the President’s Men. Remade as Enemy of the State in 1998, the far superior original hits cinemas in a brand new print while the rediscovery of Gene Hackman, star of wacky comedy The Royal Tenenbaums and a major National Film Theatre season, is already underway.

Set and shot in LA’s cultural Californian alter ego, San Francisco, the film employed a deglamourised and seedy Hackman, a jazzy score and exacting use of sound for an ominous exploration of a man’s inner life. Sneaked in between the Godfather blockbusters, Coppola’s pet project remains his favourite film and has garnered a faithful critical and niche following. Epitomising that apparent oxymoron – American art movie – the film anticipates the most experimental of American independents.

An intensely private man, top surveillance technician Harry Caul gives nothing away and lives in a sparse apartment with nothing of value except his keys. Working on a routine assignment in which a young couple is tailed in a public place, Harry re-runs their rambling talk, searching for optimum resolution. What he hears forces him to cross the line between professional voyeur and guilty party:

“He’d kill us if he could…He’d kill us if he could…”

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Article - "THX 1138 - Revisiting Tomorrow" by James Clarke
Wednesday 15th September 2004

Vincent Van Gogh once wrote that the image he most associated with freedom was that of a sunset. George Lucas’s vintage science fiction movie THX 1138, now available as The Director’s Cut DVD, provides a close enough version of the painter’s notion, offering a moment...  View article in full

Article - "All Eyes on Me: Paranoia in Cinema" by James Oliver
Tuesday 11th September 2007

Like all art, movies reflect the culture in which they were created. So it's no wonder that the movies made since the second world war are awash with paranoia. The modern world has provided ideal conditions for paranoia to thrive in. It's not just the moonbats who th...  View article in full

Collections & Lists

This film is part of the following Film Collections

Palme D'Or Winners

Including: All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now Redux, Blow-up, Brief Encounter (1945), Dancer in The Dark, Elephant, Kagemusha, La Dolce Vita, Marty, MASH.

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