The Conversation [1974] [Blu-ray]

This film is a classic, but very few people regard it as such.Gene Hackman was a wonderful actor (he has officially retired)He fits the conspiracy / spy / on the run and everyone's chasing you genre perfectlyhis grizzly voice and look perfectly sum up the situationIn this movie Gene is busy in a serveillence opperation and hears something unexpectedthe plot doninos off this simple factA fantastic film for the thinkers out there. Do not buy if you expect thrill spills and car chases

I felt a lack of attachment with the main character played by Gene Hackman (Harry Caul) and half the plot which rotates around the overplayed taped conversation of a man and woman. However I have found the movie interesting from a psychological point of view. Here we see how Gene Hackman’s character obsession with his surveillance job slowly eats away his sanity. The audience is left to decide on the reality of what is being heard and seen which could make a second viewing worthwhile.

I would have expected more from a film starring the wonderful Gene Hackman, but I was disappointed. Yes, it was very dated, with old surveillance techniques rather crudely demonstrated, but I stuck with it in case it got better. Well, it didn't. However, the piano music was very effective, and the slow deterioration of the character was clever but subtle. The portrayal of a dysfunctional loner was well acted, but I cannot give any more than three stars, and perhaps I am being a tad generous.

The half understood comments, the recording that convinces the innocents are the victims. A wonderful classic of a film that means more today than it did when it was first released. We are now living in an age where were are all recorded and spied on. But we do so with the understanding it is just something we will get used to. A picture or a brief comment wont be misunderstood. will it? Wonderful acting by everyone and a story that will stay with you forever.

‘The Conversation’(1974) is an excellent thriller (/chiller?) starring Gene Hackman. If you’ve seen ‘Enemy of the State’ (1998), whether you liked it or not, I’d recommend you saw this one because of the contrast. Both focus on surveillance, but this film treats it from the ‘hacker’ viewpoint whereas the 1998 film mainly deals with surveillance from the target’s point of view. Both films are excellent but the 1998 film is full of action while this film is full of tension. But it’s not that simple and I think the essence lies in four lines of the script.Early on Harry Caul (Hackman) declares ‘I have no secrets’ but he’s lying because he’s just one big secret, even from himself (NB the confession scene and how the priest is gradually revealed as Harry falls apart). He loses his temper every time he discovers anybody has been spying on him. Then there’s the overheard ‘He’ll kill us if he got the chance’ which forms the kernel of the plot. Harry becomes obsessed with the idea he’s assisting in a murder (his RC background is crucial here as Harry HAS to see himself as a NEUTRAL observer). But he gets it all wrong. ‘Show and tell. How d’you do it?” is a challenge from his fellow hackers which he finds almost impossible to meet. Harry insists he’s simply an objective collector of data by surveillance but any analysis of his technique exposes how much just how much he examines the target and destroys their privacy, whatever he may tell himself. Is this obeying the ‘Love thy neighbour as yourself’ commandment? Harry long bottles up the answer to that one. Finally he asserts after ringing a client that ‘You don’t have my telephone number’ because that gives that essential inner security. But ‘they’ do have it and Harry realises he’s become the target. Watch the film to see the effect on his personality.There’s an excellent performance from Hackman with good support from John Cazale, Allen Garfield and a young Harrison Ford. The soundtrack is brilliant both with the use of ‘snatched conversations’ (with its querky technical hitches) and a jazz-dominated musical background. Effects, montage etc. are good although I did wonder, apart from commercial reasons perhaps, why it had to be shot in colour. Easily worth 5 stars.

Brilliant Kafkaesque character study, in which a paranoid surveillance expert, racked with guilt over a previous job, tries to intervene in his latest case, only to find out that all is not what it seems. Gene Hackman gives a superb central performance in this naturalistic drama.

There has never been a bad Francis Ford Coppola movie, nor a bad Gene Hackman one. Added to that Harrison Ford playing a seedy gay character. Absolute gem of a movie, a must see for any movie fan.

The Conversation is a quiet masterpiece, a great character piece that has been clearly thought through but never at the expense of the credibility of its central voyeur (Hackman even wears the peeping Tom's standard uniform of trenchcoat and prescription glasses). It's a glorious mixture of underplayed conspiracy, coincidence, paranoia and interpretation, reinterpretation and misinterpretation that marries form and content with a quiet assurance: at times the camerawork literally mimics automated surveillance cameras as the `best bugger on the West Coast' (a phrase that is open to serious misinterpretation in San Francisco) starts to unravel over the possible consequences of his actions.The DVD extras aren't plentiful, but more than make up for it in quality.