Review of The Conversation (1974) by Brian E — 27 Feb 2010

During Francis Ford Coppola's winning streak behind the camera in the 70's, he decided to diligently craft his time wisely between his first two Godfather masterpieces by writing, producing, and directing 'The Conversation' in 1974.

In conjunction with his acclaim and success from playing the lead in William Freidkin's 'The French Connection', it seems Gene Hackman was also at his winning streak. 'The Conversation' is one hell of a subtle film in comparison with its peer politically-driven thrillers of that particular decade, like John Schlesinger's 'Marathon Man', Alan Pakula's 'All The President's Men', Bernardo Bertolucci's 'The Conformist', Sydney Lumet's 'Network', and Michealangelo Antonioini's 'The Passenger', to name a few.

Our protagonist, played by a strategic, calculating, and highly secretive Gene Hackman, is a freelance wire-tapper whose morality is at stake when he's offered $15,000 to tap into a top-dog executive's (played by Robert Duvall in minimal screen time) wife and her conversations with a man who she may or may not be having an affair with.

The morality plays in through feeling responsible for the death of a politician's family after uncovering dirty secrets by his own hired wire-tapping. More individuals become increasingly threatening to his secrecy, heightening his paranoia in a way that would give Roman Polanski a few creative ideas.

We experience this centrally through his interactions with women; how words are misshapen into intrusions to his secrecy, which runs him off from relationships altogether. Coppola's slow-boiling thriller is the summary of an alienated man, completely alone in the world as a result of the line of work he chose to pursue - and it's more than just the financial stability of a paycheck, but more his passion and artistry of being breakthrough in up-to-date wire-tapping technology, and creating new methods of intrusion.

'The Conversation' is an absolute predecessor to the recent Academy Award-winning German film 'The Lives of Others' - both coldly attempting to examine the impenetrable man of secrecy at arm's length.

Coppola's film doesn't exactly live up to its peer films of its decade, playing the more conventional card against considerably unorthodox approaches to films with politically-driven plots , yet that's saying very little considering the bar being set at a maximum by directors of more artistically paralyzing, more liberal background (a la Antonioni, Bertolucci, and Schlesinger).