The Conversation (1974) * * *

 

Directed by:  Francis Ford Coppola

Starring:  Gene Hackman, Allen Garfield, John Cazale, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Teri Garr, Elizabeth MacRae

Harry Caul's life is a dichotomy.   He excels at surveillance and delivering the goods for his clients, but what is on the tapes could lead to others being hurt or worse.   Six years earlier, his surveillance may have led to the deaths of two people and he is haunted by it.   He records a conversation between a man and a woman in a crowded San Francisco park.   They may be lovers or perhaps conspirators.   We hear the conversation in fragments.   Are they plotting something or are they in the midst of an affair?   As more of the conversation is revealed, the less we learn.  

Caul (Hackman) is an intensely private man whose connections to others is limited.  He has a girlfriend (Garr) who he visits less and less frequently than she would like.   He isn't married, so what is keeping him from forming a relationship with her deeper than a few visits?   He lives alone in an apartment, but is dismayed to find his landlord entered to leave him a birthday present.   The irony of a surveillance expert complaining about invasion of privacy is thick.  

Maybe he has his reasons for not opening up.  When he attends a convention, he brings back some of his competitors and a hooker to his office.   The hooker plays him, he opens up to her, and he awakes to find his recordings stolen.   Caul wanted to delay bringing those tapes to his client for fear of a repeat of six years ago.   His client's shadowy assistant (Ford) seems to be pulling the strings, or worse keeping tabs on Caul.

Hackman speaks very little, as if he is afraid to admit something he doesn't want others to know.   His mistrust of others is seen verbally and non-verbally.   He'd rather hide in a corner than mingle.  The movie doesn't judge him.   We gradually learn he has his reasons stemming from an unhappy childhood coupled with a job he has the curse of being good at but despises. 

The Conversation suffers from a payoff which doesn't match the intensity of the buildup.   Does what happen occur in Caul's head or was it part of a plot?   Is he paranoid or did something really happen?  The Conversation has a surprise ending in which someone winds up dead, but we don't know how or why.   We hear the bulk of the taped conversation in its context, and we are still baffled.   With that being said, the first seventy-five to eighty percent of The Conversation is an involving character study of a man who wishes he weren't involved in any of this.