The great irony of Francis Ford Coppola’s career is that he once envisioned a creative life of personal filmmaking, telling intimate stories in small scale. That was before he created one of the most acclaimed and beloved film franchises of all time with the Godfather trilogy. And between the sweeping generational drama of the Corleone family, the psychedelic antihero’s journey of Apocalypse Now and the epic scale of his new film — literally titled Megalopolis and opening wide later this month — it’s easy to overlook the quiet perfection of the auteur’s 1974 picture, The Conversation.
The Conversation is a neo-noir thriller centered on Harry Caul — a surveillance expert in San Francisco. Harry’s hired to eavesdrop on the titular talk between a man and a woman taking a chilly morning stroll through Union Square. But as Caul begins to assemble his audio tracks, he uncovers the mention of a murder and finds himself pulled into a deeper mystery that threatens his own perfectly private world.
The Conversation gives us infidelity, corporate hubris and little secrets at every turn. These make for a classic mystery movie, but the film endures as a contradictory character study of Caul, who’s portrayed by Gene Hackman in one of the great actor’s most indelible roles. Caul is a revered surveillance wizard who makes a living uncovering the things people hide. But his personal life is intensely private: He has three locks and an alarm on his apartment door; he’s a workaholic who lives alone but keeps a separate apartment for his girlfriend, who doesn’t know his profession or even his birthday; he lies about not having a phone to avoid giving out his personal number. The Conversation’s plotting is tightrope-taut, but it’s the movie’s explorations of the border between privacy and paranoia that threaten to push Harry — and the picture’s viewers — off balance.
The ghost with the most hits theaters this week, while ‘Megalopolis’ and NaFF loom
Hackman is pitch-perfect as Caul, but The Conversation also features an all-star cast of Coppola regulars including John Cazale, Teri Garr, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest and Robert Duvall, plus an unforgettable cameo from a young Harrison Ford. Pioneering sound designer Walter Murch puts on a master class here, and he gets a lot of credit for The Conversation’s Palme d’Or win at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.
This new DCP restoration of The Conversation screens at the Belcourt on Monday, Sept. 16, and Friday, Sept. 20. It’s part of the arthouse’s new Essential Coppola series, which includes all-timers like all three Godfather installments as well as the weird and wonderful time-travel gem Peggy Sue Got Married. The series plays all month in anticipation of the Sept. 26 premiere of Megalopolis.
