THE CONVERSATION @ 50

Harry Caul says he doesn't care what's on the tapes he makes of other people, just that they are good recordings. That's until one job he carries out as a surveillance wizkid leads him into the rock and hard place squeeze of a powerful corporate client and what might become the business mogul's victims in a love triangle. Also, others in his profession consider themselves his rivals would jump at the chance of stepping into his spot if he's discredited or eradicated. Harry starts caring fast.

Francis Ford Coppola's first feature after his massive breakthrough with The Godfather was its opposite. The mafia epic was long on themes of secrecy and protection. The Conversation is about the dangers of secrets and the ethics of protection. Coming in the hard wake of the Watergate scandal, it presents an America destabilised behind a public partition of order. The crucial phrase uttered by one of the couple Harry records in the opening scene can be interpreted with opposite meanings, both are bad. Hobson's choice, I guess, but in this case he could take his fee and go on or intervene, act, as anyone who helped expose Watergate had.

The paranoia thriller is not substantial enough to really form a sub-genre but there are some significant entries. From the same year as this came The Parallax View, Alan Pakula's dizzying scenario of assassination contractors recruiting from the disaffected and powerless. The Conversation is from the side of the practitioners and its world is no warmer. The sense in both cases is that it's not just the corrupt and subversive that are the threat but the power that prefers to go unnamed. This is not me getting into conspiracy bullshit, just recognising that there have been anonymous movers in the past that these films allude to. 

Coppola keeps his pallet drab and workaday, bringing us into the home and job life of Harry and his colleagues. Even their conventions are sleazy and low. That said, the opening scene of the team making the recording of the titular conversation, with one shotgun mic set up at a high window looking like a sniper rifle, mics hidden in bags or lapels, and the orchestrated movement through a busy CBD lunch area with crowds, a miming busker, and a site office in a van, is impressive. Also, one of the most diverting tactics in focussing interest in any kind of thriller is to show process. The individual recordings are all beset with a flutter. They need the other recordings to be perfectly synched and played together. After that has been established, the magic laid bare, we are already cocking ears to hear what will be the film's McGuffin. Coppola had already shown mastery of this in The Godfather with the setup of the restaurant hit; this is one instance where he expanded his practice from that film's scope.

Gene Hackman leads a cast of actors who variously had been known or would be but it is his barely concealed intensity that drives the film. He keeps his detective eyes behind his glasses and further into the recesses of a mind he doesn't like sharing with anyone. Hackman shares an obvious pain when he must open up and make his decision. Undeservedly bridesmaid but never bride Terri Garr has a brief but notable role as Harry's mistress. Harrison Ford is young and shark-eyed as a corporate frontliner. Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams, soon to be the Shirley in Laverne and Shirley, are the seemingly doomed couple at the centre of the big nasty machine moving around them.

Harry Caul is too wary of surveillance to have a phone at home. Today, he wouldn't hae a mobile or any internet footprint. He's gang, he doesn't just know what they can do but what they do. The post pandemic world leaves us in a position where we waive trust for convenience and fall prey to myriad scams, all through access that we all but advertise just to be a part of the world as it is. Harry's world is only limited by analogue technology, it's digital descendants are much stealthier, hungrier and sleazier. 

I had misremembered the twist of this story. There is a moment when Harry understands a different reading of the crucial line which brings him to action. But the real twist is in its extension, its similarity to the effect that an AI approximation of our speech patterns and voice tone remind us, the creepiness is not in the shadows but the faces we welcome in.

Viewing Notes: The Conversation is having a fleeting revival at The Nova in Melbourne. This might well be in conjunction with its release as a disc for home video (I have the magnificent 4K bujt it's also on DVD and Blu-Ray) or available through subscription on Paramount streaming.