by John Walters
On Tuesday, January 31st, Gene Hackman celebrated his 93rd birthday while Cindy Williams passed away at the age of 75. Birth and death. Yin and yang. Abbott and Costello. Okay, maybe not all of those metaphors apply.
Anyway, Hackman and Williams (the latter best-known for her work in Laverne & Shirley) both appeared in the 1974 film mystery thriller The Conversation. I’ve never seen it but am pledging to change that by week’s end. It’s one of those under-the-radar classics, or so I’ve read.
The film was written, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, who by this time was feeling prit-tee, prit-tee good about his cinematic powers after producing The Godfather and The Godfather II (both, deservedly, Best Picture Oscar winners). Those two films accounted for six Oscars—five of which are directly attributed to FFC—and that’s on top of the Oscar he won for co-writing Patton in 1970.
Then there’s the cast: besides Hackman, who’d won a Best Actor Oscar a few years earlier as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, and Williams, who’d co-starred in American Graffiti, you have a pair of Godfather I & II veterans in Robert Duvall and John Cazale. Also, a young Harrison Ford as well as Terri Garr, who had either just shot or was about to shoot Young Frankenstein.
The Conversation fits into that conspiracy thriller/paranoia genre that sprang up in the early to mid-Seventies, probably not coincidentally, in the wake of Watergate and also as Vietnam was winding down: Three Days Of The Condor, Marathon Man, All The President’s Men and this come immediately to mind. You can even throw Chinatown in there if you like. I’m sure there are others that do not immediately come to mind.
In the film Hackman plays Harry Caul, a San Francisco-based surveillance expert who, ironically, is obsessed with his own privacy. Three of the people he has listened in on have ended up dead. You never hear anyone quote The Conversation or much discuss it. I’ve never seen it come up on TCM. And yet it has that legendary cast and also was nominated for a trio of Oscars, including Best Picture. It did not win any, but FFC did not help himself by having it also go up against his own Godfather II.
If you’ve seen The Conversation and want to share a comment, please do. We’ll try to check it off our bucket list this week.
Also, if you get a chance, check out Hackman’s next film, 1975’s Night Moves, which is sort of like a dark, dark episode of The Rockford Files with a splash of Miami Vice. A hidden gem.
Finally, another example of an extraordinary cast in a film no one ever mentions: The Chase, from 1966. It has Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall (again… he was in EVERYTHING for awhile), Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson, and the legendary Miriam Hopkins, arguably the greatest American-born female screen star of the silent film era and better-known as William Randolph Hearst’s longtime girlfriend.
I’m curious to hear if you like The Conversation. I watched it for the first time a few weeks ago and thought it was good, not great. Might be because it had been built up so much by others which raised my expectations. Definitely worth watching.
The Conversation works fine as a mystery/thriller but works much better as a character study, powered by an excellent Gene Hackman performance. It’s definitely identifiable as an American 70’s film: some jarring camera work and split screens, intrusive score, some overly long, talky scenes, the theme of paranoia throughout. Solid, memorable movie but it’s become sort of a cult film despite not being close to the same class as Chinatown or other contemporaries.
Hackman’s character in “Enemy of the State” is a nod to “The Conversation.”
Saw The Conversation when it came out and rewatched a few years ago. While it stands the test of time the premise was more significant in 74. Worth the watch. I’m curious to think what those born 1995 – 2005 think of it. Hackman is great in the role.
I saw The Conversation onboard the SS France on my way over to ND’s sophomore year program in Angers. Back then, it was actually cheaper for ND to put you on a boat across the Atlantic than to fly. First run movies were shown in the ship’s large theater and I saw Spielberg’s first big movie, Sugarland Express, along with The Conversation on that trip. Both fantastic movies as I said goodbye to North America for a year.
A Ferry on a ship. It was fated.