In contemporary times, our lives can be monitored through phone calls, regular mail and e-mail, and, of course, the Internet. In the words of Neo-Luddites (millennial technophobes), the Digital Age has ushered in a new kind of Big Brother. This, in turn, has led to worry about privacy and security, and the implementation of remedies such as firewalls on the Net, digitized phones and encrypted e-mail messages. 

     Despite the ubiquity of computers and cell phones, though, issues of privacy are nothing new. In 1974, film director Francis Ford Coppola tapped into the national agitation over the Watergate cover-up -- after all, in August, 1974, Richard Nixon would step down as president of the United States* -- with his sixth film, an edgy thriller entitled The Conversation.  It stars Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, a top-notch surveillance expert, "a private and suspicious man who lives with as little traceable human reference as possible” (P. Starr).

     The Conversation percolated on a back burner for some time. In the late 60’s, Coppola spoke with fellow director Irvin Kerschner about electronic bugging. Kerschner then sent Coppola an article about a notorious sound wizard living in San Francisco (Cowie 83). Tie that in with events at home and abroad, such as whispers of a cover-up in the Chappaquiddick incident (1969), the Watergate scandal, and various political assassinations, as well as other films tackling the same subject.**  It’s easy to deduce the release of The Conversation couldn’t have been more timely. 

     Flashforward to 2004.  In our era of computer investigations and identity theft, when individual privacy has become more tenuous than ever, "The Conversation is so old, it's new” (Brenner). Thus, while The Conversation was made 30 years ago, it is nevertheless timely.

     On a basic level, the film can be seen as a meditation on technology. Technology is neither inherently good nor evil, rather, it’s how we employ such advancements that designates them as helpful tools or as weapons of destruction. This attitude is also visible at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, released six years earlier: A prehistoric man realizes that a bone from an animal carcass can be used as a hammer and later, as a club. In apparent celebration of the breakthrough, he tosses his tool/weapon up in the air. Then, through the magic of cinema, the primitive instrument morphs into a similarly shaped spaceship, as the film moves us millions of years into the future, to when such craft are peaceful interplanetary transit vehicles (Gray, 123).

     In The Conversation, electronic surveillance is presented as a science, with Harry Caul's instruments, like Harry himself, as mere tools. (Harry can’t -- or won’t -- interpret or evaluate what he’s recorded until it’s too late.) Thus, these high-tech tools, as well as the people who wield them, eventually become weapons in a war against privacy. This is illustrated early in the film, when a man on a rooftop aims a camera/directional microphone at a couple walking through the square below.  Looking through the device’s eyepiece, we are reminded of a high-powered rifle (Cowie 86), perhaps even the one that the Warren Commission claimed Lee Harvey Oswald fired on President Kennedy. Sure, Harry’s team is engaged in a business operation, not a military coup, but as New York Times critic Vincent Canby has commented, "private enterprise, as always, leads the way. Government breakthroughs, like break-ins, are usually a mistake" (Cowie 201).

       When we first meet him, Harry is a thoroughly guarded fellow, in part because he’s well aware of “the stealth and damaging power of subverting people’s prices.” As alluded to above, he’s obsessed with the technological aspects of his job, and he eschews any ethical or moral ramifications of invading people’s privacy. As Harry quips to his assistant, Stan (the late John Cazale, who also plays Fredo in Coppola's Godfather saga), “I don't care what they're talking about. All I want is a nice, fat recording.” 

       Eventually, though, Harry does begin to care. From never listening to what he has taped (claiming he’s interested only in the quality of his recordings), he starts to show concern for those he’s wiretapping. Are they truly the bad guys, or could they be the innocent scapegoats of the person who hired him in the first place?  (The latter -- played by Robert Duvall, also in Coppola’s The Godfather and Apocalypse Now -- is a corporate bigwig known only by the ominous title “the Director.”) Alas, Harry discovers too late the fallout of not taking a moral stance, and the film ends up revealing “what it feels like to live through a period of ‘disillusionment and full-scale social disintegration’" (Loop).                 

     While shot mainly from Caul’s perspective, most of the narrative unfolds in a fairly objective manner, so viewers must make up their own minds about what it all means. Some may find this ambiguous, while others may see it as refreshing, given Hollywood’s penchant for happy endings and all loose ends tied up. This technique, coupled with jump cuts, also underscores Harry’s ordeal of trying to make sense of his recordings, and being mistaken in some of his deductions (Jacobson). 

     Coppola sandwiched The Conversation between the first two Godfather movies, stating that the only reason it got made was his sudden clout after The Godfather became a huge success.  Paramount, hungry for a sequel to the mob film, agreed to fund Coppola The Conversation, which up until then had been roundly rejected by the Hollywood studios. Though nominated for three Oscars (Best Picture, Original Screenplay and Sound), The Conversation earned none, perhaps because Coppola was competing against himself with Godfather II. However, The Conversation did win Cannes’ coveted Lion d’Or award, as well as the National Board of Review’s nod for Best Picture. Variety lauded Coppola's labor of love, calling it “Coppola's most complete, most assured, and most rewarding film to date, and the years it took him to bring it to the screen should be considered well worth the persistence" (Cowie 85).  After more than 30 years, it's reputation is untarnished, as it consistently places among Internet Movie Database's top 250 films of all time, and has been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. 

*More than one film critic has seen similarities between Harry Caul and Nixon: "(T)here are ample traces of Richard Nixon (a Quaker) in Harry Caul. Both are paranoid, secretive and incapable of establishing human contact" (Patterson).

**Likeminded films include 1973's Executive Action, in which a cadre of industrial and military bigwigs try to assassinate the president, and Serpico, about a real-life New York cop nearly killed by colleagues during a raid after exposing corruption in the ranks. In 1974, the fabled Chinatown focuses on deceit and paranoia among the elite, and The Parallax View uncovers a political assassination bureau:  After the murder of a senator, witnesses begin to die, including the main character, an investigative reporter.
 

  REFERENCES

     Brenner, Paul.  Rev. of The Conversation. <www.mediascreen.com/cd/conversation_dvd.htm> 

     Cowie, Peter. Coppola. New York: Scribner's, 1990.

     Farber.  Stephen. "A Nightmare World with No Secrets." Review. New York Times, 12 May 1974: II, 13: 1.

     Jacobson, Colin. Rev. of The Conversation. DVD Magazine. <http://dvdmag.com/conversation.shtml>

     Einstein, Daniel. "The Conversation." Magill's Survey of Cinema: English Language Films. Second  Series.Vol. 2. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press, 1981. 515-18.

     Gray, W. Russell.  “Tuning In To The Conversation 25 Years Later.” Journal of Popular Culture. Fall 99, Vol. 33 Issue 2.

     Loop, Joshua.  Rev. of The Conversation. <http://moviething.com>

     Patterson, John.  "All You Need Is Cash."  Guardian Unlimited. March 1, 2002. 
http://film.guardian.co.uk/patterson/story/0,12830,935053,00.html