The Conversation (1974)

I kept hearing how The Conversation was a very strong Gene Hackman movie and was one of his best.  They were not kidding.

He didn’t talk as much – his job was listening, but wow you really get a sense of his character. 

Hackman plays Harry Caul, a surveillance expert, who is tasked with listening in on a seemingly benign conversation between a young man (Frederic Forest) and young woman (Cindy Williams) in a busy park. 

Caul is one of the best of the best, and he figures out a way to record the conversation without being noticed.  Plenty is going on in the park – people having lunch, many conversations going on at once, kids playing and screaming, a mime (Robert Shields of Shields and Yarnell – I’d recognize that head of hair anywhere), and general chaos.

Caul positions several people with recording devices throughout the park with various associates so he can pick up what the special couple are talking about.  Intrigue follows as many people, both inside and outside the situation, are highly interested in the recording, including an aide (a pre-Han Solo Harrison Ford) to Caul’s client - a high-level government official (an uncredited Robert Duvall), Caul’s less persnickety partner (John Cazale), his closest rival (Allen Garfield), and various and sundry others.

The more Caul listens to the recording of the conversation, the more he reads into it.  The more he reads into it, the more he thinks he understands what’s going on.  The more he thinks he understands, the more he becomes alarmed at events he believes are going to occur.  His guilt over the part that he has played begins to overwhelm him, and he becomes obsessed.

Until this job, it’s clear that not only is Caul the best in the business, keeping it professional and ice cold while keeping his own life tap-free.  He makes the recordings, improves the sound quality, delivers the product, and collects the money.  To wind down he plays jazz on his tenor saxophone.  But for some reason he becomes emotionally invested in this particular recording and the cracks begin to show.

Early on in the film, Caul discovers that a security alarm has appeared on his apartment door.  He spends time on the phone with the landlord trying to find out how he entered his apartment without notice and installed the alarm without his “OK”, as he has insisted on absolutely no one entering his apartment without his knowledge.

Later, a phone starts ringing in his desk drawer.  Since he does not own a phone, this is clearly a message from someone who is watching him.  He pulls open the drawer and answers it, clearly vexed.

It has become apparent that someone who is at least as good as him has started keeping tabs on him.  We may have a hint who that person is during a spontaneous get-together with wire-tapping colleagues and co-workers (and a particularly saucy blonde who seems extremely interested in getting Caul alone).

The Conversation is an interesting study on paranoia.  I think this is my favorite Gene Hackman performance so far.  As I mentioned, his character doesn’t have a lot to say.  And Hackman is not as scream-y as he was in The Poseidon Adventure.  But he gets his thoughts and emotions out on the screen quietly and with ease.  What I love about Hackman, and the actors of this period, is that they were theater babies.  Actors who studied their craft and practiced it with care.  These are my favorite folks to see on screen.

If you have a free afternoon and don’t know what to watch, check out The Conversation.  It was 113 minutes long and I didn’t pick up my phone except to confirm on IMDB certain actors I hadn’t seen in a while.  I was heavily invested in the story and loved the ending. 

By the way, here’s a little trivia:  The Conversation is one of the five movies (all Oscar nominated) that John Cazale was in before he died of lung cancer.  His love Meryl Streep stepped away very early in her promising career to care for him until he passed.  Cazale, as you probably already know, was the actor that the Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro generation of actors looked up to and revered.