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The Conversation is a 1974 American neo-noir mystery film Thriller film film written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who faces a moral dilemma when his recordings reveal a potential murder. Supporting cast members include John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, and Frederic Forrest. Harrison Ford and Teri Garr appear in credited roles, with Robert Duvall in an uncredited role.
The Conversation premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or, and was released theatrically on April 7, 1974, by Paramount Pictures to critical acclaim. It made $4.4 million during its original release, and after several re-releases, its total rose to $4.8 million on a $1.6 million budget. The film received three nominations at the 47th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound.
Since its release, it has been regarded as one of the best films. In 1995, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
When he discovers a potentially dangerous phrase in the recording, "He'd kill us if he got the chance," Harry becomes increasingly anxious. His attempt to deliver the recording is thwarted, and he is both followed and threatened.
After a party at his workshop, Harry spends the night with a woman he has just met and the tapes are stolen. He receives a call from Martin Stett, the Director's assistant, informing him that the Director could not wait any longer and they have the tapes. Harry is tasked with delivering the pictures taken and collect his money in a meeting with the Director that afternoon. There he learns that the woman in the recording is the Director's wife, involved in an affair. Harry, suspecting murder, books a hotel room next to the one the couple had mentioned for a planned rendezvous in the recording, and overhears a heated argument. Convinced there was a murder, Harry breaks into the room; he initially finds no evidence, until he flushes the toilet and finds it clogged and overflowing with blood.
Attempting to confront the Director, Harry discovers the wife is alive and unharmed, as is her lover. A newspaper headline reports that an executive has supposedly died in a car accident. Harry realizes that the couple actually murdered the Director, having missed the emphasis on the word "us" in the recording, which not only expressed the couple's fear of being killed by the Director if he discovered the affair, but was also an attempt to justify killing him first as a defensive move.
Stett calls Harry at his apartment, and warns him not to investigate. He plays a freshly made recording of Harry playing his saxophone to prove they are listening. Harry frantically searches for bugs in his apartment, destroying nearly everything in it. Having failed to locate the bug, Harry sits alone amid the wreckage, playing his saxophone.
Walter Murch served as the supervising editor and sound designer. Murch had more or less a free hand during the editing process because Coppola was working on The Godfather Part II at the time. Coppola noted in the DVD commentary that Hackman had a very difficult time adapting to the Harry Caul character because he was so much unlike himself. Coppola says that Hackman was at the time an outgoing and approachable person who preferred casual clothes, whereas Caul was meant to be a socially awkward loner who wore a rain coat and out-of-style glasses. Coppola said that Hackman's efforts to tap into the character made the actor moody and irritable on set, but otherwise Coppola got along well with his leading man. Coppola also notes on the commentary that Hackman considers this one of his favorite performances.
Coppola has cited Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966) as a key influence on his conceptualization of the film's themes, such as surveillance versus participation, and perception versus reality. "Francis had seen it a year or two before, and had the idea to fuse the concept of Blowup with the world of audio surveillance."
Private investigator Hal Lipset is credited as a technical advisor on the film. He chose state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, and had Caul's surveillance follow methods which were mostly realistic. In the film, Lipset and Caul are mentioned as two of the pre-eminent surveillance experts who will be attending a convention.
On the DVD commentary, Coppola says he was shocked to learn that the film used the same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used to spy on political opponents prior to the Watergate scandal. Coppola has said this reason is partially why the film gained the recognition it has received, but it was entirely coincidental. Not only was the script for The Conversation completed in the mid-1960s, before Nixon became president, but the spying equipment used in the film was discovered through research and the use of technical advisers, and not, as many believed, by revelatory newspaper stories about the Watergate break-in. Coppola also noted that filming of The Conversation had been completed several months before the most revelatory Watergate stories broke in the press. Because the film was released to theaters just a few months before Richard Nixon resigned as president, Coppola felt that audiences interpreted the film to be a reaction to both the Watergate scandal and its fall-out.
Coppola also based Caul on the protagonist of Hermann Hesse's 1927 novel Steppenwolf, Harry Haller, a "total cipher" who lives alone in a boarding house. Coppola also made Caul religious, including a confession scene; Coppola has said that the practice of confession is "one of the earliest forms of the invasion of privacy—earliest forms of surveillance."
Caul was also inspired by Karl Schnazer; a private investigator and occasional actor who appeared in Coppola's early films Tonight for Sure and Dementia 13. Schnazer recounted to Coppola an incident where a man he had tailed for months failed to recognize him at a party, which later inspired a sequence in the film.
Roger Ebert contemporary review gave The Conversation four out of four stars and described Hackman's portrayal of Caul as "one of the most affecting and tragic characters in the movies".Roger Ebert (1974). " The Conversation". January 1, 1974. Retrieved June 2, 2023. In 2001, Ebert added The Conversation to his "Great Movies" list, describing Hackman's performance as a "career peak" and writing that the film "comes from another time and place than today's thrillers, which are so often simple-minded".Roger Ebert (2001). " The Conversation". February 4, 2001. Retrieved June 2, 2023.
In 1995, The Conversation was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Gene Hackman has named the film his favorite of all those he has made. His performance in the lead role was listed as the 37th greatest in history by Premiere magazine in 2006. In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed the film as the eleventh-best edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.
The film ranked 33rd on the BBC's 2015 list of "100 Greatest American Films", voted by film critics from around the world. In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter ranked the film 8th among 69 counted winners of the Palme d'Or to date, concluding: "Made in a flash between the first two Godfather movies, Coppola’s existential spy thriller has since become a pinnacle of the genre."
The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists The Conversation as among "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."
| Best Original Screenplay | Francis Ford Coppola | |
| Best Sound | Walter Murch and Art Rochester | |
| Best Actor | Gene Hackman | |
| Best Screenplay | Francis Ford Coppola | |
| Best Editing | Walter Murch, Richard Chew | |
| Best Soundtrack | Art Rochester, Nat Boxer, Mike Ejve, Walter Murch | |
| Best Director – Motion Picture | Francis Ford Coppola | |
| Best Screenplay | ||
| Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama | Gene Hackman | |
| Best Director | Francis Ford Coppola | |
| Best Actor | Gene Hackman | |
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