I stuck The Conversation on my Criterion Channel watchlist a while back as it was the only one of John Cazale’s five movies that I hadn’t seen. In light of Gene Hackman’s death, and seeing as how I am experiencing the general grogginess of the switch to Daylight Savings Time, I figured it was a good time to see it rather than head out to see something in theaters. However, watching the opening credits, I realized that Hackman and Cazale are not the only members of the cast that are no longer with us. Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, and Teri Garr aren’t around anymore either. That’s a little depressing.
However, we do still have Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, and director Francis Ford Coppola as I type this up. None of them are young men, but they’re still around.
Harry Caul (Hackman) is a surveillance expert who does wiretapping for clients. His current job involves following a young couple (Forrest and Williams) are they engage in a conversation in a public square. Working with various assistants, including right-hand man Stan (Cazale), he gets what he needs, but when it comes time to turn the recordings over to the Director (Duvall in a small role) and get paid, Harry instead has to deal with the Director’s somewhat intimidating assistant Martin Stett (Ford). Harry, feeling some guilt over what he’s done as it is, refuses to turn the tapes over until he deals with the Director personally. In the meantime, he’s a bit haunted by the fact that the young man said something about how someone would kill the pair if given the chance.
As it is, Harry is a very secretive man who doesn’t tell much of anything to anybody. He does have a lover (Garr), but she doesn’t know much of anything about him as he gets very uncomfortable when she asks him very basic questions like whether or not he lives alone. As the movie progresses, Harry grows more and more concerned for the young woman at least, given how she expressed concern for a homeless man. That plus Harry’s devout Catholic faith has him thinking he needs to maybe do something before someone gets killed. Can he prevent a death?
I went into The Conversation expecting a tense thriller, and to be sure, it is that, but it gets to that ending in a different way. Much of what happens comes from the gradual development of Harry Caul’s character. He doesn’t say much about himself, so what the audience learns comes from other actions. He goes to a Catholic church at one point to confess his sins, and he plays the saxophone along to jazz albums in his spare time. He doesn’t like it when anybody asks him about his life or what he does. He’s a man who listens in to others and is exceedingly private at the same time. Even his closest friends don’t seem to know much about him, and when people try to find out, even in a friendly manner, he pushes them away. This is a man who didn’t like the fact his landlady had a key to his apartment.
All this leads to the investigation, such as it is. Harry may be great at listening and recording others, but that doesn’t mean he’s much of a detective. Likewise, he just doesn’t know much of what’s going on, and it does seem as if Stett knows more about Harry than Harry would normally like. Hackman plays the role brilliantly, and the rest of the cast is up to the task to deliver a solid character study/thriller. I was actually really interested in Ford is a rare antagonistic role. Coppola made this one in the middle of a solid streak of great movies, alongside the first two Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now, and while The Conversation may be the weakest of the four, that is not to say it’s at all weak itself. It’s just the one that doesn’t quite get tossed around with Coppola’s all-time greats like the other three.
Grade: A-
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