Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
Despite being made in 1974, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation still has a haunting impact that ripples throughout modern day society. The electronic surveillance technology at the center of this political thriller has improved greatly in the 50 years since The Conversation’s release, but the paranoia infused within Coppola’s private eye mystery still plays on every level.
“A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.”
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writer: Francis Ford Coppola
Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford
Release: April 12, 1974
IMDB
Despite being made in 1974, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation still has a haunting impact that ripples throughout modern day society. The electronic surveillance technology at the center of this political thriller has improved greatly in the 50 years since The Conversation’s release, but the paranoia infused within Coppola’s private eye mystery still plays on every level.
Henry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a quiet man based out of San Francisco who loves his saxophone jazz music. His isolated demeanor is perpendicular to his reputation in the electronic surveillance game where he is renowned as an expert and trailblazer. Caul makes his own equipment and runs his own outfit. He is a man who lives where he works and rarely lets anyone close to him.
The story of The Conversation begins with Caul and his co-worker Stan (John Cazale) stalking a young couple meeting in a crowded and noisy community square. A client, known only as “The Director” (Robert Duvall), has asked for audio recordings and photographs of the meet up. The recordings Caul gathers are eyebrow raising themselves, but our protagonist’s antennas go up on high alert once he meets with The Director’s assistant Martin Stett (Harrison Ford). With past baggage helping influence his thought process, Caul becomes convinced that the couple he’s recorded are in danger. This raises multiple moral questions for the creative sloothe, all of which must be answered in quick-succession while simultaneously dealing with threatening personalities spying on his every move.
Spoilers for those who don’t want to know going forward.
The Conversation doesn’t leave you any questions about the film’s main plot, but the answers aren’t comforting for Caul or the audience. It turns out that the woman taped in the crowded park at the start of the film is The Director’s wife and she has been having an affair for what seems like a long time. Using information from the recordings, Caul gets himself within spying distance of the women and The Director. He overhears a heated argument and after a time breaks into a hotel room where the suspected suspicious activity took place. Caul finds no evidence of any wrongdoing, until he flushes the toilet and blood comes rushing out.
Dealing with a crisis of conscience, Caul attempts to storm in and see The Director. He arrives at the man’s place of employment and discovers that the wife is alive and unharmed. News reports reveal that the wealthy executive died in a car accident, but context clues acquired by Caul make it obvious that foul play played a part in the man’s demise. It turns out that the wife and her lover planned the death of her husband, and Stett was in on it the entire time as well.
Before Caul has time to contemplate what to do with the truth, Stett calls the isolated loner at his home and plays a recording of Caul practicing on his saxophone. The man known for his auditory surveillance skills has been bugged himself. Caul begins destroying his already museum plain apartment searching for the bug, but as the credits roll, Caul is left alone in the middle of a timberwood mess with no evidence of a listening device. Only his saxophone is left intact.
The Conversation is a fantastic movie. It’s Francis Ford Coppola strutting his stuff and flexing his Hollywood muscle. The Conversation won the Palme d’Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound. Somehow, The Conversation didn’t get any award recognition. Why, you ask? This film called The Godfather: Part II (1974) swept the awards. Turns out this Coppola is a pretty good filmmaker, huh? Coppola himself was nominated for five Academy Awards at the 1975 Oscars. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Gene Hackman was churning out movies in the early 1970s. He was in for movies in 1971, including his Oscar winning performance in The French Connection (1971). In 1972, Hackman was the lead in this Coppola deep thinker, as well as the exciting The Poseidon Adventure (1972). A man of many different genres, Hackman was able to make himself invisible to the audience and instead blend into the story as a character. Such a talent is necessary for the character Hackman is playing, Henry Caul.
Caul is such a fascinating character. Within The Conversation, he is the old hat who is still getting his job done at an exceptional level despite not using the most modern tech. He is the crafty pick-up basketball player who isn’t flashy but will stack the box score with remarkably efficient numbers. The fact that Caul doesn’t want to move forward in the world of technology is emblematic of the fact that Caul sees how dangerous his job is becoming. This is emphasized more so in the fear that Caul has for the individual he was hired to spy on. The world of spying and tech is advancing at an exponential rate, but just because the technology is growing doesn’t mean humans are able to understand humans any better. Caul thinks he knows the story, he thinks he has found the pieces others have been missing, but even the best-of-the-best without the added gimmicks can still be surprised.
The Conversation thrives in paranoia, and it’s that emotion that sinks Caul in the end. For those who have seen the movie, does Caul ever find the bug hidden in his apartment? Is there even a bug in his apartment at all? The context clues from the scene Coppola constructs leave a bit of room for the audience to interpret, but there is also one logical answer that’s all-be-it depressing in itself. Hints at the end of the movie make it seem as if the bug is hidden within Caul’s saxophone. The only mental escape Caul has from his life of constant back-watching is the only thing he can not destroy, and it is the only place he hasn’t thought to look. His need to escape the world of spying and espionage, and his only means of escape is lock to his mental prison.
Perhaps the best part is that we don’t have a definitive answer because Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t even know if there is a bug in Caul’s room. In the commentary for the film, Coppola states that he never made a definitive answer himself; he said that Caul was either delusional, or it was part of the saxophone strap.
Perhaps Copoola’s greatest accomplishment is not the character of Caul but his ability to predict the future. He pulled a 1970s version of The Simpsons. The Conversation was released two years after the Nixon Watergate Scandal began, and the technology used in this movie was part of what was used to obtain evidence in the real-life government robbery. Coppola wrote The Conversation in the 1960s and could not get it made until after his success with The Godfather, but the idea the man had a decade prior became remarkably prescient to American society at that moment in time. And let’s not ignore the fact that when Caul checks into the hotel room, he turns on the TV and begins hearing a broadcaster discussing the irreparable reputation of President Nixon.
Perhaps in another bit of unknowing predictive knowledge, the casting of Harrison Ford in the role of Martin Stett is a stroke of genius. At the time of The Conversation’s release, Ford had been in one major film, American Graffiti (1972), which Coppola produced. Either he was on set with George Lucas seeing what this grifter could do with his charm, or he was given a good word, because putting such a talent in The Conversation works on every level. Watching it now, the performance by Ford is far more menacing than we’d see from him for the next what, two decades? Stett is also a character that doesn’t need words to convey his mood, and that is Ford throughout his career. It’s a lot of body language and quiet glares, and just look a few years later at Han Solo and you’ll find a character whose eye movements convey his mood as well as his verbal talkback.
The Conversation is an admirable piece of filmmaking. Coppola has gone on record saying this is his personal favorite movie of his, and it makes sense seeing how it was a nearly decade long process to get this particular story made. The story itself is set in the seventies, but has any of the paranoia dissipated over the years? Following 2001 and The Patriot Act, there was a whole new conversation to be had and The Conversation still dovetail its way into relevance.
Perhaps the spin on the story now would be how wreckless society has become with the idea that not only the U.S. Government who may be gathering unnecessary and unwanted information. Perhaps now someone could write a contemporary version of The Conversation and compare the paranoia we as a society should have with the ignorance we instead possess? The modern twist We have grown complacent with the idea that our information is not our own any more, and we do we really know the danger that is.
The fact that a movie steeped in technology made in 1974 can still be relevant in 2023 is remarkable. The Conversation can still start a compelling conversation in itself. It’s beautiful, scary and still remarkably watchable in that way.
As of January 2024, The Conversation was streaming on Paramount+.
STANKO RATING: A-
Post note here. I couldn’t find a way to add it into the blog itself, but the score and sound mixing is outstanding. It was nominated for Best Sound and rightfully so. It is unique right from the jump. Cursory research says that Coppola and sound directors Walter Murch and Art Rochester used different recordings to evoke the different ways that Caul was listening to the recordings. It is just great stuff.
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