Respond to these rapid questions in our The Conversation quiz and we will tell you which The Conversation character you are. Play it now.
While his colleagues in the surveillance industry consider Harry Caul to be an intellectual prodigy, we are surprised to discover just how bad he is at his job. Here’s an example of a man who is being compensated for listening in on a conversation in a public place. He succeeds, but he then allows the tapes to be stolen from his possession. It is because his triple-locked apartment is so insecure that his landlord is able to enter and leave a birthday present for him. His mail has been received and read. He believes his phone is unlisted, but it is in fact in the possession of both his landlord and a client. In the course of a trade show, he allows his chief competitor to trick him with a microphone hidden inside of a free promotional ballpoint pen. According to his mistress, “once I saw you up by the staircase, hiding and watching for a whole hour,” she explains.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film “The Conversation” is about a man named Harry, who is not only bad at his job, but also deeply dissatisfied with his situation. His snooping may have resulted in the deaths of a woman and a child in the past. He is now concerned that his new tapes will be used to commit another murder. In the confessional, he warms up by confessing to the priest that he has used the Lord’s name in vain and that he has stolen some newspapers from a rack while in the church. “I’ve been involved in some work that I believe will be used to harm these two young people,” he continues. It’s something that has happened to me before. People have been harmed as a result of my work, and I’m concerned that it will happen again, so I’m… I was in no way to blame for what happened. I’m not the one who’s at fault. “I sincerely apologize for these and all of my sins from my previous life.”
Why does he express regret if he is not at fault? Harry, who is played by Gene Hackman in one of the most memorable performances of his long and illustrious career, tries to distance himself from his work as much as possible. The only person who can see how worried he is is Meredith (Elizabeth MacRae), the hooker she brings home from a convention. “Don’t bother with it, Harry. After all, it’s just a trick, or even a job. You are not permitted to express any opinions on the subject. “It was just something I was supposed to do.” She’s speaking for herself as well as anyone else. When he awakens, he discovers that she has followed her own advice and stolen the tapes from the safe.
Rob Coppola, the film’s writer and director, considers it to be his most personal work to date. The film was being made two years after the Watergate break-in, amid the devastation of the Vietnam War effort, and it told the story of a man who relies too much on high technology and has nightmares about his personal responsibility. Mr. Caul is a microcosm of America at the time: not a bad man, trying to do his job, haunted by a guilty conscience, and believing that his reputation has been tarnished by his actions.
The film is effective on a moral level, as well as as a taut, intelligent psychological thriller. Opening with a breathtaking long-exposure photograph depicting an overflowing plaza in San Francisco, the film is a visual treat. Music from a distant land is mixed with electronic sounds. In the beginning, the camera pans slowly around Caul’s head, and then it follows him for a while. Other shots show a man with a shotgun microphone, perched on the roof of a nearby building, with his cross hairs trained on a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest), who are the subject of the investigation, in other shots. We eventually make our way into a van filled with electronic equipment, where Stan (John Cazale), Harry’s assistant, is waiting for us.
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“After all, who’s interested in these individuals?” Stan inquires. A source of frustration for Harry is that Stan appears to be careless about their work, which to him is a sacred calling. Later, we find out who is interested in the project: In this film, Harry is hired by the director of a large corporation (Robert Duvall), though he initially only deals with the man’s personal assistant (Harrison Ford). After a while, it becomes clear that Ann (the young woman) is the director’s wife and that Mark (the young man) is Ann’s lover. But what is going to happen next? “If he had the opportunity, he’d kill us,” Mark claims. Is he going to do it? A scene in which Harry plays the tapes back and forth while juggling a bank of three tape recorders was inspired, according to Coppola, by the photographer trying to coax the truth out of his prints in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up,” which was shot in the same year. Snatches of conversation come and go, mingling with the sounds of a band playing “Red, Red Robin” in the plaza, which is a source of aggravation.
Harry is irritable with Stan, and irritable with everyone else. When he returns home, he is surprised to discover that his landlord has entered his apartment, is aware that it is his birthday, and knows his age. The landlord explains over the phone that he requires his own key in case of an emergency. “I’d be perfectly content if all of my personal belongings were destroyed in a fire,” Harry explains to him, “because I don’t have anything personal to protect.” “I don’t have anything of value—just my key.” He pays a visit to his mistress Amy (Teri Garr). When he comes in quietly through the door, she recognizes him as the man she’s been waiting for. She asks him to share something personal with her that is important to her.
“I don’t have any secrets,” he declares confidently.
The Conversation Quiz
“I’m keeping my identity a secret,” she says.
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Allen Garfield, who plays Moran, a successful competitor of Harry’s, delivers the best supporting performance. During a trade show, Harry discovers that Stan has abandoned him and has gone to work for the Moran Corporation. Despite this, he invites Moran, Stan, and a large group of people back to his office, which is hidden behind steel mesh in an otherwise empty warehouse. His humiliation is compounded when he discovers that Moran bugged him, and he is then betrayed by the hooker later that night. A nightmare provides important information: As a child, Harry was paralyzed on one side and came dangerously close to drowning while taking a bath. The word “Caul” has two meanings, both of which are relevant: it refers to both a spider’s web and the membrane that surrounds a fetus during pregnancy. It is learned that if it is discovered on a child’s head soon after birth, “it is supposed to protect against drowning.”
Harry has developed into a lonely adult as a result of his troubled childhood. He lives alone and has no other means of entertainment other than playing his saxophone and listening to jazz records (again trying to make a recording more complete). He has no influence over any woman, that is for certain, or else he would not be seen in that crappy plastic raincoat, the kind that folds up into a travel pouch, like everyone else. His Catholicism is not based on faith and hope, but rather on a sense of shame. He rips apart everything in his apartment in search of a hidden bug, but he pauses when he comes across a statue of the Virgin Mary.
For those looking for a pure thriller, the movie is at its best during a scene in which Harry checks into a hotel room next door to a rendezvous between Mark and Ann. He hears a struggle and what sounds like a murder while listening through the wall. His first reaction is to cower under the covers, terrified. Much later, when he enters the room, it has been meticulously cleaned. However, when he flushes the toilet, bright red blood gushes out into the bowl.
About the quiz
There has been a great deal written about that scene. Is it real or is it all in your head? The new DVD release of “The Conversation” includes commentary tracks by both Coppola and Walter Murch, the film’s editor and sound wizard, but neither of them addresses the issue. Murch recalls his adolescent humiliation when he tried to flush some pornographic magazines down the toilet and they came tumbling back up at exactly the wrong time, according to Coppola, who says the scene was inspired by the shower scene in “Psycho.” I believe that the scene is meant to be realistic. Later on, the quick cuts of what might have happened in the room are, I believe, Harry’s speculations about what might have happened.
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“The Conversation” takes place in a different time and place than today’s thrillers, which are frequently simplistic in their thinking. In this film, we follow the story of a man who has removed himself from life, believing that he can observe it dispassionately from a distance through technology, and who discovers that all of his barriers are worthless. The cinematography (the opening scene is by Haskell Wexler, and the rest is by Bill Butler) is purposefully planned from a voyeuristic point of view; we are always looking, but only partially seeing what is going on around us. Here is a man who is on a quest for the truth, and the truth is always out of reach. Is Mark saying “He’d kill us if he had the chance” or “He’d kill us if he had the chance” as the conversation is played over and over again?
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