smatysia
Well-known as one of Gene Hackman's best roles. I don't know if I completely agree with that, but it IS pretty good acting work. The film is partly psychological character study, part suspense. Elizabeth MacRae, Harrison Ford, and Teri Garr do nice work in small roles. Films like this, which focus on technology, often do not age well, and that's the case with this one. While it is interesting to see how surveillance was done in the early Seventies, it only brings home how much easier and quicker these things can be done with computers. It seemed to me that one of the themes was the shocking (for the times) lack of privacy that everyone had, but of course that is nothing compared to now.
gwmasse
Did Orsen wells write this garbage. This movie was so highly rated I was kinda excited about watching it. Boy was I disappointed. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war...............That'll do pig that'll do.............
Wuchak
Released in 1974 and written/directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "The Conversation" is a potential crime drama starring Gene Hackman as a freelance surveillance technician in San Francisco whose team records a conversation by a man and woman (Cindy Williams & Frederic Forrest) as they walk through crowded Union Square. Using three different recordings of the event he expertly pieces together the conversation and tries to figure out its meaning. He fears that someone might be murdered over it, which haunts him from a past gig. Robert Duvall plays the client, a mogul of some sort, while Harrison Ford plays his dour assistant. Teri Garr has a small role.While the movie was released after Watergate, the story was written in the mid-60s and the movie was completed several months before the scandal broke out. It was sorta prescient in that it used the very same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used to spy on their opponents. This is a slow drama focused on the psychology of the privacy-obsessed protagonist and the meaning of a phrase on the recording, depending on which word is stressed. It's surprisingly engaging for being so uneventful (until the final act, that is). The way the revelations are depicted at the end show that this movie influenced others 25 years later, like 1999's "The Sixth Sense." But that film is more cogent with its revelations whereas "The Conversation" keeps everything somewhat ambiguous. Unfortunately, I didn't find Hackman's character interesting, like his characters in other films, e.g. 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" and 1969's "Downhill Racer." Nor did I find his acting convincing when he would stutter. And, as expert of a surveillance technician he is, he's blatantly bumbling in numerous others. I guess he's a metaphor for America, which was a technically rich superpower, but utterly stoo-pid in many ways (e.g. the Vietnam fiasco).The film runs 113 minutes and was shot in San Francisco. GRADE: B-
Alex Aragona
Francis Ford Coppola remarked that The Conversation is the most personal project he's done, and that really comes across on screen. I suggest that any movie lover watches this movie attentively and with appreciation for the personal nature of this project.There are many that have reviewed this movie and called it "overrated" "boring", "slow-moving" etc.I don't think that that is very fair. It is clear from the nature of their reviews that they're not "giving the director their time". That is to say, if you sign up to watch a movie, you must realize that you are giving some of your life to the running time of the movie and the Director. What's important is what the Director does with that time, not what he does with your very personal expectations and wants out of the movie.With all of that in mind, The Conversation is great. It is a character study, a morality tale, a comment on technology and society, and a thriller all wrapped into one movie. And YES, Coppola takes his time building it and it is a bit slow-moving. But that doesn't make it bad at all. It is Coppola's personal story to tell, and he goes about telling it the way he likes.Go in understanding that, and you'll enjoy The Conversation.
AD
