Slideshow
Francis Ford Coppola's
THE CONVERSATION
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NEW 35mm PRINT PERSONALLY SUPERVISED BY FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
WINNER: PALME D’OR, CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 1974
Director Francis Ford Coppola
Cast Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Cindy Williams
Screenplay Francis Ford Coppola
Cinematography Bill Butler
1974 | USA | 35mm | Approx. 113 min. | In English
“He’d kill us if he had the chance.” Loner audience surveillance expert Gene Hackman’s masterpiece: bugging a couple (Frederic Forrest and Laverne & Shirley’s Cindy Williams) in San Francisco’s teeming Union Square. But what was it for? Hackman’s Harry Caul is a brooding, paranoid recluse, living alone in an empty apartment, where he plays saxophone to jazz records and broods over deaths he presumably caused in the past. But what did that sentence mean? And as he keeps tinkering with recordings, he gets bugged himself, his tapes are stolen, his landlord effortlessly penetrates his security to leave a note – and then, to his horror, he figures it out. Coppola’s “personal” follow-up to his mega-blockbuster The Godfather was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture – the same year as The Godfather Part II. With John Cazale (Fredo of the Godfather films) as Harry’s dim-witted assistant and soon-to-be-stars Teri Garr and Harrison Ford.
A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE.
Reviews
“DEVASTATINGLY BRILLIANT.”
– Tony Rayns, Time Out
“A TRIUMPH… GRITTY, COMPLEX, IDIOSYNCRATIC.”
– David Denby
“A GRIPPING MASTERPIECE.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“An immaculate thriller, a study in paranoia and loneliness, partly inspired by Antonioni’s Blow-Up, and released as the Watergate scandal was unfolding, [with] one of Gene Hackman’s greatest performances.”
– Philip French, The Guardian
“When it premiered, 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, 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.”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker
“Harry ranks with Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or the pathetic captives of the middle class in John Cassevetes’ Faces.”
– Roger Ebert
“Remarkably ambitious and serious – a Hitchcockian thriller, a first-rate psychological portrait of a distinctive modern villain, and a bitter attack on American business values… all in one movie.”
– David Denby