Retrospective: 50 Years Later, We’re Still Talking About ‘The Conversation’ (1974)

Fifty years ago, Francis Ford Coppola solidified his reputation as a legendary director when he released two very different but powerful films only months apart. 1974’s The Godfather Part II is, of course, iconic in its own right and won six Oscars, including Best Picture. But also included in that year’s group of nominees was Coppola’s other, more subtle crime picture, The Conversation.

Some will bristle at the idea of calling The Conversation a crime movie in comparison with The Godfather saga. Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul is no Michael Corleone, after all. He is simply a surveillance expert, but a very good one; the best in the business, to some. His is not a story of organized crime or turf wars, or murder plots  — until it is.

Opening on a sunny afternoon in San Francisco, Harry and his team observe and record a conversation between Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest). Harry doesn’t know anything about them and doesn’t particularly care. He was hired to record them and doesn’t concern himself with the details until he hears something that convinces him his targets are in danger.

In the days that follow, Harry finds himself thinking about this young couple and what he heard. He replays the conversation over and over, almost obsessively. It interferes with his work, his relationships, and his peace of mind. For Harry, protecting them becomes a chance to correct something that went wrong on a previous job that resulted in three deaths, an incident we never fully learn about but that no one will let him forget. 

Harry Caul is a fascinating character both for what he is and what he isn’t. His wardrobe is nondescript, his apartment plain, his possessions few. He avoids close relationships and personal questions. He is also a man of deep faith who goes to confession and condemns anyone who takes the Lord’s name in vain. All of this disguises a genius at the top of his field.

What becomes quickly apparent about The Conversation is that it isn’t a taut, noir thriller in which a rumpled detective tries to stop a murder or solve a crime. It is a character study about a seemingly plain but deceptively deep and troubled man. The couple he wants to save and the people he encounters along the way all serve to reveal more of Harry than anything else. At a security and surveillance convention, he encounters both former associates and admirers and it is through this event more than any other that the audience understands how respected Harry is in this field. We have already seen him accomplish a seemingly impossible task (by 1970s standards)  in the opening scene: capturing a conversation between two roving talkers in the middle of a crowd. At the convention, we learn this is far from Harry’s biggest claim to fame, though the humble genius would never be bothered to say as much.

It is one of the ironies of Harry. He earns a generous living spying on people, but no one would know it to see his apartment or his wardrobe. He never questions his job or the motives behind them, but he captures people’s most intimate moments and conversations. Yet when a female companion asks where he grew up or an old pal asks how he hid a microphone, he shuts down and pushes them away. He claims he has no secrets while refusing to give up anything about himself.

Harry’s obsession with protecting Ann and Mark also drives him to set aside some of the principles that made him a revered celebrity in his industry. He takes risks and refuses to stop when his client’s assistant (a very young Harrison Ford) urges him not to get involved. By the end, Harry has crossed so many lines and personal boundaries, he can never be the same. And so it doesn’t matter whether he successfully stops a murder plot, uncovers a conspiracy, or adapts to a changing world. The Harry Caul we meet in the park one afternoon is not the same man we leave alone, playing a saxophone in his empty apartment at the end. The wreckage of his surroundings mirrors the wreckage of his life and we have witnessed the descent through Hackman’s quietly brilliant performance.

Originally released in April of 1974, The Conversation reflected a changing political landscape and an increasingly paranoid world. Two years after the Watergate break-in, but months before the revelation of the recording that would force Nixon’s resignation, Coppola’s surveillance drama wasn’t exactly a reaction to the Watergate scandal, but it did highlight a new era of investigation and espionage. It was the height of the Cold War and the heyday of the FBI and the CIA. Average Americans, particularly anyone involved in the Civil Rights movement, had plenty of reason to suspect the government was watching. The Conversation tapped into the idea that anyone could be and probably was. 

In the fifty years since, movies have gotten more sophisticated as the idea of spying on one another has become a trope and a reality. Brian De Palma’s 1981 film Blow Out starred John Travolta as a foley artist who accidentally records evidence of a murder and finds himself on the run. In 1992, Robert Redford leads a team of surveillance artists and hackers in a questionable government commission in Sneakers. 

By 1995, the internet was a common threat and popped up as a weapon of choice for evil corporations in films like The Net and Hackers, while the government itself continued to be the biggest threat, using technology against ordinary citizens in Enemy of the State, among others. In the new millennium, new technologies exploded onto the screen in Steven Spielberg’s fascinating and frighteningly prescient Minority Report before fully embracing artificial intelligence as recently as last year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.

It’s easy to buy into these types of stories because we see it in our actual lives. Every one of us carries surveillance equipment in our own pockets. Our phones can spy on us and for us, an idea Christopher Nolan played with more than 15 years ago in The Dark Knight. Whether a social media company is accessing our internet searches to send targeted ads, or an influencer records a person going about their day and uses the footage to shame or mock, we are all under threat of surveillance all the time.

Where Harry’s story particularly resembles our modern day is in what he does as a result of what he hears. Overhearing a simple sentence, “He’d kill us if he had the chance,” Harry launches into interpretations, assumptions, and decisions without context or any way to confirm his theories. Today, the ubiquity of podcast and TikTok investigators has given rise to conspiracy theorizing in greater abundance than ever before. Sometimes, these armchair detectives manage to uncover crimes and save people. Often, they cause more harm than good. Once in a while, innocent people are hurt because of them.

In the case of The Conversation, we never know quite enough about any character to determine whether Harry should get involved or not. But what is clear by the end is that Harry’s life is worse for it. A tragedy in 1974 becomes a warning for us in 2024. Coppola’s Palme d’Or winner was both a timely commentary on a changing world, and a clairvoyant glimpse into a future where we are all Harry Caul, stripped down, surrounded by chaos, and all we can do is play on.

Paramount Pictures premiered The Conversation on April 7, 1974. It is currently available to stream on Pluto TV and to rent or buy on Prime Video.