The Conversation |  | Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Actors: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
Buy New: $17.99
New (1) Used (5) from $4.20
Rating:  124 reviews
Sales Rank: 86734
Format: Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Running Time: 113 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.1 x 0.6
UPC: 097360230727
EAN: 0097360230727
ASIN: B000056HVQ
Theatrical Release Date: 1974
Release Date: December 12, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 119 more reviews...
 Long & Dull May 23, 2009
S. howard (Central Indiana)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
There are a few moments in this flick that are useful but overall it's lonnggg and dullllll; I would not recommend it for entertainment purposes.
 See This More Than Once May 21, 2009
Craig Connell (Lockport, NY USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of those films I'm glad I gave a second chance because it got much better..... and has continued getting better with each viewing.
I know a few other people who watch this DVD and ask, "What's the big deal?" Well, do what I did and give it another chance. Here's a tip: put on the English subtitles. It helps understand what is going on, as the taped conversations are often difficult to discern. Then, you might discover what I did: a fascinating character study, one that did not bore me as it had on the first viewing.
It's the study of a paranoid loner who is suffering a guilty conscience over the work he has done over the years, and what tragic consequences could happen with the latest project he's involved with. Without giving anything away, the loner's fears are realized in a shocking ending, but not in the way he imagined.
Gene Hackman, as always, does a super job of acting. He dominates the film as the main character, "Harry Call." The topic matter - high-tech surveillance - was intriguing, too. After watching this film, I wondered what kind of surveillance tools are available now, 35 years after this film was made.
Chilling Classic December 27, 2008
G. Yearwood (upper NY)
The classic always seems to be the best well believe it or not I had to see this movie because a good deal of parts seem to be found in his more recent "Enemy of the State" Staring Gene Hackman and Will Smith with the tones being the same only in a more technology based society. Keeps you wondering "WHO" and does your job make what you do bad as the addage goes depends if you view the whole picture and not judge on just fragments. Strong, riviting, with a twist.
 Over-rated October 15, 2008
Bradley F. Smith (Miami Beach, FL)
0 out of 7 found this review helpful
Apres "The Godfather," Francis Ford Coppola decided to indulge his artistic urges and this is what he produced. It's arty alright, but it's also very boring. Gene Hackman is wasted. A very young Harrison Ford is a hoot to see, though. There's a limited jazz soundtrack. It's primarily interesting as a film to look back at the very dated early '70s styles.
Great September 19, 2008
Cosmoetica (New York, USA)
There are some works of art that are obviously derivative of others, and obviously inferior, because they simply ape the earlier work, tweak a few minor things, and try to pass off their theft as `homage'. The Conversation (1974), written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is not one of those minor works. It has a manifest endebtedness to Michelangelo Antonioni's brilliant 1966 film, Blowup, yet it does not merely ape that film's existential dilemma of an accidental photograph possibly cluing its lead character into murder. Instead, The Conversation probes far more deeply into its lead character Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) and his life, to see what might cause a man to misinterpret reality to suit his own psychic needs.
Another major difference is that the tale in Blowup is one that is wholly accidental, whereas the story The Conversation is built upon is an outgrowth of the deliberate and paid for actions of Caul, the leading West Coast surveillance expert, who has been hired by the mysterious Director (Robert Duvall) of a giant corporation to spy on his wife Ann (Cindy Williams) and her lover Mark (Frederick Forrest). The film opens, around Christmastime, with Caul and his entourage tailing and listening in to the conversation of the two lovers as they stroll in Union Square, an open air park in downtown San Francisco. The fragmented bits of conversation he pieces together only later, and comes to feel that the couple is being set up for murder by his employer. The opening zoom down from a sniper's eye level, focuses on a mime (Robert Shields) who is annoying people in the square. Eventually he sidles up to and mimics Caul, who walks away. The opening scene was filmed by Haskell Wexler, and the rest of the film by Bill Butler, who took over after Wexler and Coppola had a falling out.
It is a shame that in the nearly thirty years since the 1970s, Coppola has never made a film that comes close to the power of his films from that era. Despite its debt to Blowup, The Conversation is a far more realistic and multi-layered film. That does not mean it's better nor worse than Blowup, just not a ripoff. It is far more internalized, even if a little less subjective, than the earlier film. This seeming disconnect between the objective and that witnessed by the audience only deepens the desire to rewatch the film. Especially great is the fact that the film's lead is the sort of character other films ignore, to focus on one of the players in the love triangle, or perhaps Martin Stett. Caul is a functionary, an apparatchik- yet he's real, and his struggle is every bit as interesting as the `sexier characters'. Yet Coppola heeds Juvenal's query from his sixth Satire: `Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' (`Who watches the watchmen?') There are many watchers in this film, yet the final watcher is the audience, and what they watch is greatness, simple in its complexity.
The Conversation is a great, simple, and small film, never too long at an hour and fifty-three minutes, and it may be Coppola's best. It was very timely, considering the milieu of Watergate, but the idea came to him in 1967. It started filming in late 1972, and wrapped shortly before Watergate came to light, yet it has been lost between the three other titanic films he made in the 1970s: The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II, and Apocalypse Now. Whereas those three films were operatic, this film is a chamber piece, and apropos of that, the piano only soundtrack by Coppola's brother in law David Shire, so reminiscent of Erik Satie piano pieces, is perfect, for, as Coppola says in his commentary, the piano is a lonely instrument; lonely as Harry Caul, or an unanswered question.
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