The Conversation is a 70s classic that is little lauded and a film I hadn't heard of until recently. Starring an on form Gene Hackman, it deals with the secretive world of surveillance and is regarded by many as being beyond its time in terms of maturity and strength of plot. Hackman stars as Harry Caul, the best at what he does. A surveillance expert, he and a friend are observing and recording a conversation between a man and a woman, with multiple cameras and audio devices set up in painstakingly careful fashion, the operation being developed over a length of time in order to capture the conversation as the couple move. Harry's skill is the envy of others ...  Read the complete review

The Conversation is a seminal classic of American cinema and one of the many great American films from the 1970s in the wake of the counter-cultural upheaval, such as All the President's Men, that deals with sensitive political issues, and in this case, is also scarily prescient in its examination of the surveillance society that is now prevalent in our society. The film is largely influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, which dealt with similar issues but chose photographs instead of audio. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a surveillance expert who runs his own firm, and lives a fairly secluded life due to the nature of his work: he is uncomfortable around ...  Read the complete review

To me this film i a real gem and although dwarfed by Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Godfather' i still rank it in my top 100 films of all time if not just for the originality of it. The Conversation was filmed around the same time as the Watergate scandal, which left the public all the more aware of the ideas of surveillance and just how affective it can be at eavesdropping in on your life. With these themes and some brilliant acting from Gene Hackman comes some fantastic scenes and too me, although the film looks technically stunning, The Conversation's biggest quality is its sounds. From the beginning scene where Hackman's character Harry is listening ...  Read the complete review

*Contains spoilers* This review was originally written by myself, here: www.fritzlfan.wordpress.com It is indeed the case that The Conversation is an often overlooked film due to Francis Ford Coppola's bigger budget efforts, namely The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now. However, with Gene Hackman's performance greatly helping, The Conversation is in my eyes, and many others', up there in terms of quality with the aforesaid large budget films. Made in between the first two Godfather films, it focuses on a man, Harry Caul, who spends his days listening to the conversations of others. The fact that Caul is an extremely private man is ...  Read the complete review