[ May 1, 2024 ]
Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is the early Coppola classic, The Conversation. This tense, paranoid thriller presents Francis Ford Coppola at his finest — and makes some remarkably advanced arguments about technology’s role in society that still resonate today.
Made between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), and in part an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni’s art-movie classic Blow-Up (1966), The Conversation was a return to small-scale art films for Francis Ford Coppola.
Surveillance expert Harry Caul is hired by a mysterious client’s brusque aide to tail a young couple. Tracking the pair through San Francisco’s Union Square, Caul and his associate Stan manage to record a cryptic conversation between them. Tormented by memories of a previous case that ended badly, Caul becomes obsessed with the resulting tape, trying to determine if the couple are in danger.
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The Conversation
The writer-director Francis Ford Coppola took a suggestion from his fellow-filmmaker Irvin
Kershner to check out the expanding world of electronic eavesdropping, and developed it into a near-triumph about a guilt-wracked bugging master named Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who believes that he hears intimations of murder on his surveillance tapes. When it premièred, in 1974, the movie’s technological tricks and sleek corporate backdrop evoked Watergate. Thanks to Walter Murch’s keen, intuitive sound montage and Hackman’s clammy, subtle performance, the movie captures a more elusive and universal fear—that of losing the power to respond, emotionally and morally, to the evidence of one’s own senses. Bespectacled and balding, Hackman conveys a clumsy sensitivity that compensates for the wispiness of the script; he’s abetted by John Cazale, as Caul’s assistant; Allen Garfield, as Caul’s competitor; and Cindy Williams, Frederick Forrest, and Robert Duvall, as the trio involved in the homicide plot.
— Michael Sragow, The New Yorker
Kershner to check out the expanding world of electronic eavesdropping, and developed it into a near-triumph about a guilt-wracked bugging master named Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who believes that he hears intimations of murder on his surveillance tapes. When it premièred, in 1974, the movie’s technological tricks and sleek corporate backdrop evoked Watergate. Thanks to Walter Murch’s keen, intuitive sound montage and Hackman’s clammy, subtle performance, the movie captures a more elusive and universal fear—that of losing the power to respond, emotionally and morally, to the evidence of one’s own senses. Bespectacled and balding, Hackman conveys a clumsy sensitivity that compensates for the wispiness of the script; he’s abetted by John Cazale, as Caul’s assistant; Allen Garfield, as Caul’s competitor; and Cindy Williams, Frederick Forrest, and Robert Duvall, as the trio involved in the homicide plot.The Truth Must be Told
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10 Comments
5 years ago
I always thought Coppola a far better director than a writer. As a writer he only seems to be able to do part of the job. There are some good ideas behind this one, but as writer or director he never seems to figure out what to do with them. The result is a mess; the viewer can play Rorschach diagram and imagine he sees profundity everywhere, and of course some like that.
5 years ago
I remember this movie. It was before Laverne and Shirley and even had Harrison Ford in it. I never knew it was a Coppola film though.
5 years ago
Gene Hackman is an excellent actor – one of my favorites. He is also a patriot.
Hard to believe but he is 89 years old.
At the age of 16 he left home to join the Marines, where he served 3 years as a radio operator. Having finished his service, he moved to New York, where he worked in several minor jobs. He then studied television production and journalism at the University of Illinois.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Hackman
I will definitely watch this movie! Great pick!!!!!!
5 years ago
Gene Hackman is an excellent actor – one of my favorites. He is also a patriot. Hard to believe but he is 89 years old.
At the age of 16 he left home to join the Marines, where he served 3 years as a radio operator. Having finished his service, he moved to New York, where he worked in several minor jobs. He then studied television production and journalism at the University of Illinois.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Hackman
I will definitely watch this movie! Great pick!!!!!!
5 years ago
Off topic – HAPPY SAINT PATRICK’S DAY!
Why do so many Medals of Honor go to service members of Irish descent?
One recipient has a theory
Stars and Stripes
By HOWARD ALTMAN | Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla. | Published: March 15, 2019
….
To help explain the numbers, McCloughan turned to history.
“If you go back to the culture of the Irish you know we’ve been fighting each other and fighting the Scottish and so on and so forth for years and years and years,” he said.
His own family’s military history dates to the Picts, who lived in Scotland during the early Medieval period.
“You learn to stick up for your rights and the rights of others,” said McCloughan, of Michigan, who taught high school sociology and psychology after leaving the military.
“When you go into the service, maybe you are thinking about serving your country but I’m going to tell you what once you get there you just worried about surviving and then helping as many of your brothers survive as possible.”
Heritage, then, may help explain McCloughan’s own extraordinary actions as an Army private first class during the Vietnam War nearly half a century ago.
Over the course of a hellish 48 hours in May 1969, McCloughan rushed into a sea of bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars to rescue his fellow soldiers and fight off the enemy.
He was a combat medic with Company C, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 196th Light Infantry Brigade. He was wounded three times during the battle and was credited with saving the lives of 10 Americans from enemy fire and patching up dozens more.
Surrounded by superior forces and running out of supplies, McCloughan volunteered to hold a blinking strobe light in an open area to help guide in a nighttime resupply drop, exposing himself to enemy fire.
He is also credited with using a grenade to take out an enemy rocket-propelled grenade position, fighting and killing enemy soldiers, treating a number of casualties, keeping two critically wounded comrades alive through the night, and getting the wounded and dead ready to be evacuated at daylight.
5 years ago
5 years ago
Hackman did an encore of this role as the spook in Enemy of the State in 1998 with Will Smith and Jon Voight!
Good choice tonight!
5 years ago
speaking of Hillary, does anybody wonder who impregnated the Samsquantch if it weren’t Mr. Hubble??
5 years ago
OT, but about Pam’s acquaintance Petr Bystron
https://www.dw.com/en/venezuela-releases-german-journalist-billy-six-from-jail/a-47943133
What the far left (anti-)German
MSM are silent about (translation)
https://www.facebook.com/1972142153081848/posts/2018503355112394?sfns=mo
“Our son and German journalist Billy Six has been released – Thanks to Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov!
To our great relief we received the information yesterday evening that our son Billy Six was finally released after 119 days in solitary confinement. Meanwhile he was allowed to leave the secret service prison. We are overjoyed and glad that this hard time has come to an end.
Our thanks for this development go to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who last Thursday received his Venezuelan counterpart Jorge Arreaza during a meeting with the Austrian government in Vienna that had been planned for some time. The government of Venezuela easily complied with the Russians’ wish for immediate release.
On the German side, our special thanks go to the AfD, which has stood up for our son like no other party in Germany and helped us during this time of uncertainty. In particular we thank Petr Bystron for mediating the contact to Sergei Lavrov. We are shocked that our son was only released at the intercession of a foreign minister of a foreign country.
The German government has actively NEVER demanded his release. The Foreign Office has shown the minimum amount of activity to avoid the accusation of doing nothing. According to our findings, the Federal Foreign Office and Heiko Maas blocked rather than promoted the release. We were very disappointed.
Our disappointment and anger is all the greater because we saw that it only took a few days to release Billy. Since Mr Bystron and his wife contacted Secretary of State Lavrov, only three days passed before Billy was released. If that had not happened, Billy would probably still be locked up today.
Similarly, journalists from other countries were released within a few days after their government had campaigned for their release. Only our son had to stay in prison for almost four months because our government failed to do so.
Ute and Edward Six”
5 years ago
There was another movie along the similar lines……. “Other people’s lives”.
