Review of The Conversation (1974) by Tor M — 31 Jul 2017

Huge 70's film with a Gene Hackman in form and some marvelous directing. Harry Caul, a secretive surveillance expert, is spying on some people for someone. He listens to the tapes that he recorded and makes the fuzzy takes audible. This demands a great deal of work and when he has to deliver the tapes he is not sure if it's the right thing to do. He knows what's up and he's afraid that his work might end up killing the people he's been tracking. This gives hime some enemies, but his persona and mind is still his greatest enemy.

There are some mindpleasing scenes here, like the long party scene and the late scene in Harry's appartment. The conversation itself is repeated and as a viewer you know the words almost as good as our main guy. The acing is ace and this is a smart film with many layers. Obvious enemies, friends turning enemies, girls being girls making our man wonder about a whole lot of things. It's a horror film disguised in a crime mystery, rearly thrilling but with both frightening and intense scenes. The looser-look, with the stash, raincoat and sweaty shirts was supposedly hard for Gene to manage, but he nailed it. He claimed it's his favorite film he's done, the same is said about Coppola.

This is all about communication and handling things that are thrown at you. It's intelligent, but sadly it's not holding up as good today. Probably since the technology has came way further since then and the fact that this influational film has inspired many other films like it - still it has taken several key elemets from older films too. This takes the main theme very seriously, though. And nails it.

8 out of 10 Mother Mary figurines.