By 1974, Francis Ford Coppola was one of the most talked-about directors in Hollywood. The Godfather had come out in 1972 and swept the Oscars. Its sequel, The Godfather Part II, was on the way and would win Best Picture too.
But sandwiched between those two blockbusters was something quieter and stranger, a film called The Conversation. If it slipped past you at the time, you were not alone. It did only modest business at the box office. But film lovers have been catching up with it ever since.
A Different Kind of Film From Coppola
Coppola told Filmmaker’s Newsletter exactly what he was going for: “I think I want to do a film about eavesdropping and privacy, and I want to make it about the guy who does it rather than about the people it’s being done to.”
He credited Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blowup as an inspiration for the overall themes. And the film reportedly used the same kind of surveillance and wiretapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used during the Watergate scandal. That was the mood of the moment in 1974, and Coppola caught it perfectly.
Gene Hackman at the Center of It All
Gene Hackman played Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who listens in on a couple and uncovers what may be a murder plot. It is the kind of slow-burn role Hackman was brilliant at, all internal tension and unease.
He was already a major star by then. Audiences knew him from his Oscar-winning role in The French Connection, and from playing Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. He had also appeared in the western Unforgiven.
Hackman later said of working with Coppola: “It was a good experience, because he’s such a confident filmmaker. It was great because it was about something. It was about paranoia, the whole idea of eavesdropping.” He called it one of the most interesting working relationships of his career.
Interestingly, Hackman was not Coppola’s first choice for the role. The director originally wanted Marlon Brando. Hackman said it was not “too bad to be second” to the Godfather actor.
A Cast Worth a Second Look
The supporting cast reads like a who’s who of 1970s cinema. John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, and Frederic Forrest all appeared in the film. And tucked into a small credited role was a young Harrison Ford, one of his earliest appearances, right around the same time he was in American Graffiti.
The Awards and the Legacy
The film made $4.6 million at the box office against a $1.6 million budget; respectable, but hardly a sensation. The bigger recognition came elsewhere. The Conversation won the Palme d’Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival and received three Oscar nominations.
Today it holds a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Library of Congress has selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. And Rolling Stone ranked it among the best films of the 1970s, calling it “a different sort of masterpiece, one that tapped into the paranoid mood of the moment.”
If you remember 1974 and the uneasy feeling in the air that year, the hearings on television, the sense that someone might always be listening, this film will take you right back. And if you missed it the first time around, it is well worth the watch.
