“I don’t care what they’re talking about.” So says Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), a surveillance expert for hire, at the start of The Conversation. The movie’s extended opening sequence is a bravura mixture of sound and editing, detailing how Harry and his team obtain a clear recording of a couple surreptitiously meeting in a busy San Francisco park (where a street mime performs in a cheekily ironic touch). Harry has made a career of compartmentalizing the technical details of his profession from the practical results of his work. But when he begins to suspect this couple may be put in mortal danger by the release of the recording, his conscience begins to creep in. Quietly tucked between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II (which was then followed by nothing less than Apocalypse Now), writer-director Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is of a smaller scale, but no less technically sophisticated. (Here it’s Walter Murch’s editing and sound work—which puts us right in the middle of the tension—that stands out.) Hackman gives a great 1970s performance—no striving for sympathy, yet somehow finding it, especially when Harry’s natural paranoia gets inflamed by the case. For much of The Conversation you think you’re watching a person unraveling, but then the horrifying ending—where the editing and sound design become really sinister—reveals that the movie has been deconstructing the audience as well. With Teri Garr, briefly, as a potential girlfriend Harry can’t bring himself to trust and a delectable Harrison Ford, smarmy and insinuating, as the representative of Harry’s mysterious client.
(1/29/2022)
