The Conversation

50th anniversary screening of the film in a newly restored print.

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Allen Garfield, Harrison Ford
Duration: 113 minutes
Year of Production: 1974

In the wake of the Watergate revelations — which brought down the Nixon administration and shattered Americans’ trust in their political institutions — Coppola takes things a step further, orchestrating a surveillance nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. His protagonist, Harry Caul, a professional surveillance expert specializing in audio recordings, is hired to follow a man and a woman. As he listens to their recorded conversations, he concludes they are in danger from his client. But when the client ends up dead, everything is thrown into question. Soon, Caul realizes that he himself is being watched.

The legendary Walter Murch works a magical audio design, detaching what we hear from what we see in a brilliantly disorienting game of perception and manipulation. He constructs a haunting sonic puzzle — an invisible web slowly wrapping around the protagonist and driving him to the brink of paranoia.

A profoundly political film and an intense portrait of urban isolation through Gene Hackman’s extraordinary performance as the introverted and emotionally distant Caul, The Conversation won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It stands as one of the most powerful demonstrations of Coppola’s extraordinary talent, delivered during what may be the most significant year in a filmmaker’s life — 1974 — when he also released The Godfather Part II. Lefteris Adamidis