The Conversation (1974) Review

The Conversation (1974) 

The Conversation follows surveillance expert Harry Caul, who, after being hired to surveil a young couple in the park, discovers that he may have stumbled onto a nefarious murder plot that brings up nightmares of a previous case that ended badly. 

From accidentally filming a murder to overhearing a cryptic plot to murder, Coppola’s The Conversation (made a whole 2 years after Watergate) isn’t necessarily about the dangers of knowing too much but more about the dangers of knowing too much and feeling guilty because of it, pushing a paranoid mind to the brink of self-destruction because of it. Coppola utilizes the freshness of Watergate, the Cold War, and the mass paranoia of the time to mold Harry into a character undoubtedly affected by all that yet still somehow above it, as he is usually the one spying, not the other way around. 

And that’s what makes this so thrilling—touting Harry as the best of the best, though the more he learns about that cryptic conversation in the park and the more he opens up his life to those around him, he begins to succumb to his own paranoia, unleashing a string of events that could be his own mind playing tricks on him, or he could actually be in serious danger, knowing the dark truth about a murder that he helped facilitate. 

We get a pretty focused cast too, starring Robert Duvall, Teri Garr, Elizabeth MacRae, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, John Cazale, Harrison Ford, and Gene Hackman. Hackman is really something here and watching him fully succumb to the horrors of his own mind and paranoia is something spectacular, particularly the deeper and deeper he goes. 

The Conversation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is such a meta take on surveillance in the wake of Watergate, as all the precautions in the world couldn’t save Harry from his own fears in the end, with the audience being the true voyeurs, looking in on his own demise. 

8.6/10