The Conversation (1974)

Starring: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, and Teri Garr
Grade: A+

Even in a small role, Robert Duvall is pivotal to the complete production that is The Conversation.

Summary

In San Francisco, California, surveillance expert Harry Caul (Hackman) is at Union Square. Him and his team are discreetly surrounding the public area and are using their equipment to spy on Ann (Williams) and Mark (Forrest). A lot of their conversation is distorted.

Harry initially watches them from a park bench and then joins his partner Stan (Cazale) in their disguised parked van, as Stan is checking what all the equipment is picking up. They’re getting about 40% on one device and not much on the other. Some girls use the blacked-out windows from the van as mirrors so they can do their makeup, and Stan takes pictures of them until Harry tells him to go back to the recordings. Just then, Ann spots a man with an earpiece and tells Mark. In the van, Stan lets Harry know that their co-worker Paul (Michael Higgins) has been outed. Ann knows they’re being followed, but Mark tells her not to worry. He goes on how they’re spending too much time there, but Ann wants to stay a bit longer. Paul joins Harry and Stan in the van because he got burned, but he did pick up 25% of some audio. Harry tells Paul he’ll come in a couple of days if he needs him, and Stan chimes in to ask if he’s going to the convention tomorrow. Paul is, and Harry might as well. Paul gets a laugh out of Stan by mentioning the party they had two years prior before leaving. Harry and Stan continue to listen in on Ann and Mark, and Stan asks Harry who is after the couple. It’s not the Justice Department or anything, but Harry doesn’t say who. Regardless, he doesn’t care what they are talking about. He just wants the recording because that’s their job. Eventually, Ann and Mark go their separate ways and Harry’s workday ends. He goes to his apartment and a tenant greets him on their way out. She even wishes him a happy birthday, but Harry barely acknowledges her. He goes to his door, unlocks the millions of locks he has and turns off his alarm, but he finds a bottle of wine on the ground. After locking his door, he calls his landlady. He thanks her for the bottle but asks how he got it in his apartment because he thought he had the only key. Of course, the reason she has it is for a potential emergency like a fire or something, but he tells her that he’s fine with everything burning up in the case of a fire because he doesn’t have any personal belongings or anything of value. The only thing personal that he has are his keys.

He goes on about how he wants the only set and then inquires how she knew it was his birthday because he doesn’t remember telling her. He wants her to guess how old she is, and she guesses 44. Though he doesn’t confirm it, he says it’s a very good guess. Next, he states that as of today, his mail will go to a post office box with a combination on it and no keys, hanging up on her after delivering this news. Later, he plays a recording of some jazz music and plays his saxophone along with it. The next day, he heads to a secluded building that him and Stan go to for work. Stan greets him and brings up the newspaper having an article about the convention, as Harry is named directly as being one of the notables going. Among the other pre-eminent people showing up, Harry balks at Detroit’s William P. Moran (Allen Garfield) being in this conversation while putting up surveillance photos of Ann and Mark. Stan goes on about Moran’s claim to fame being the guy who told Chrysler that Cadillac was getting rid of its fins. Eventually, Harry turns on his machines and listens to the recordings of Ann and Mark to see what he can decipher. Sometime after, Harry goes to a telephone booth and calls the Director’s Office because he has “the material” and he’s calling for an appointment. The man on the other end tells him the Director (Duvall) already left for the day, and they’ll call him back tomorrow morning. They try to get his number, but he explains how he’s calling from a pay phone, and he doesn’t have a home phone. Hearing this, the man gives him the appointment of 2:30PM the next day and the payment will be there in full. That night, Harry goes to his girlfriend Amy’s (Teri Garr) place, and she’s surprised he came. She’s already lying in bed, but accepts Harry’s wine to celebrate his birthday, as he brought it from earlier. He’s 42 now, and Amy wants to get to know him a little better, hoping for him to let her in on some personal details or secrets about himself. He lays next to her but insists he doesn’t have any secrets. Amy refers to herself as one of his secrets and presses him more. She recalls a time when she saw Harry watching her from the staircase for an hour one time, and she thinks that he is trying to catch her doing something.

Amy also outs him for the way he opens a door. First, he uses his key as quiet as possible and then opens the door fast like he’s about to catch someone doing something. She gets up to grab some cookies from the kitchen and then lays back on the bed next to him. She laughs while stating she sometimes has a feeling he’s listening to her while she talks on the phone, but he gets oddly defensive. Once Amy starts singing this song that Ann was singing on the recording, Harry questions her about this too but she just explains that it’s a pretty song to her. Harry mentions how he heard this girl “at work” sing it today, and it reminded him of her. They start kissing. In the middle of it, Amy asks where he works, and he responds vaguely before referring to himself as a freelance musician. They try to continue, but Amy asks where Harry lives and why she can’t call him. He explains that he doesn’t have a telephone. Once she questions if he lives alone or not, he finally wonders why she’s asking so many questions. She just says it’s his birthday. Even though he doesn’t want to answer any more questions, Amy simply wants to know him. Though he confirms he lives alone, he readies himself to leave because he doesn’t want to answer any more questions. Before he does, he gives her money to pay her rent. Going to the door, he notes that she never used to ask so many questions. Amy brings up how happy she was to see Harry when he got there, but she admits she doesn’t want to wait for him anymore. With this, Harry leaves. On the bus home, he sits by himself in silence. The lights go out for a moment, and he thinks about Ann kissing Mark. Right after, the lights turn back on. The next day, Harry goes to the Director’s Office for his appointment. The front desk guy tries to take the package from Harry, but he refuses because he has to deliver it to the Director himself. The guy sees Harry has an appointment and has him wait because the Director’s assistant Martin Stett (Ford) is coming down to see him. Martin walks Harry to his office. He leaves the room for a moment, so Harry looks out Martin’s telescope while he waits. He’s startled once Martin reenters the room, swiftly takes the package, and gives Harry the $15,000 he is owed.

Harry explains he was supposed to give the Director the tapes directly, but Martin says he’s out of the country. Martin was asked to accept on his behalf and to pay Harry. Harry doesn’t feel right about it, so he lays the money on the table and takes the tapes back. Martin tries to grab it from him, but Harry takes it. Martin tells him not to get involved, the tapes are dangerous, and someone may get hurt. Even so, Harry leaves with them. As he walks down the hallway, Martin tells him to be careful. Harry goes to the elevator, and Martin watches him from the other end. While he waits, he shockingly sees Mark also there waiting. Martin pulls up the envelope with the money as a last-chance offer, but Harry gets in the elevator. As it travels down to a certain floor, Ann enters the same elevator as him. Later, Harry goes back to the secret building he works at to listen to the recordings of Ann and Mark. He hears Ann sing that song again (“When the red red robin goes bob bob bobbing along, along“) and she tells Mark to pretend she said a joke, so he fake laughs. Just then, Stan suggests they take a break and get a drink, but Harry declines because he wants to finish this. Stan thought he turned the tapes in already, but Harry tells him to be quiet so he can work. As Harry goes back to the recordings, Stan loudly criticizes how stupid the conversation is and it’s distracting enough for Harry to yell at him to stop. Stan responds with “Jesus” and “For Christ’s sake”, which makes Harry even angrier because he’s using the lord’s name in vain. Again, Harry tells him to stop. Stan questions what’s the matter, so Harry tells him his work is getting sloppy. As the Ann and Mark recording speak about something happening on Sunday, Harry tells Stan they would have had a much better track if he paid more attention to the recording rather than what they were talking about. Stan doesn’t see why these questions would bother him, but Harry says he can’t just sit there and explain the personal problems of his clients. As the recording has Mark tell Ann to meet at the Jack Tar Hotel at 3PM in Room 773, Stan whines that Harry doesn’t fill him in on stuff, so Harry explains that it has nothing to do with him and even less to do with Stan.

Stan chalks it up to curiosity, but Harry doesn’t know anything about this. As Harry talks about how this mucks up his business and such, he stops himself in frustration. Stan leaves in a haste. Harry goes back to the recordings and catches Ann commenting, “I think he’s been recording my telephone”. In the middle of the recordings, Ann and Mark walked by these street drummers and the conversation gets a bit distorted. Messing around with his equipment, Harry is able to pinpoint the conversation and clear the outside noise to hear Mark verbatim saying, “He’d kill us if he got the chance”. He now realizes that these recordings imply something more devious at play here. He goes to confession at church, as it’s been three months since his last confession. He confesses to using the lord’s name on several occasions, he’s taken a number of newspapers from the racks without paying for them (random but alright), he has deliberately taken pleasure in impure thoughts, and he’s involved in work that could lead to two young people being hurt. People being hurt because of his work has happened before. Though he knows he’s not technically responsible, he’s afraid it might happen again.

Sadly, his suspicions may very well be true.

My Thoughts:

Sandwiched in-between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II was another one of Francis Ford Coppola’s Best Picture nominees in The Conversation, a remarkably intelligent and ahead-of-its-time thriller focused on the prevailing technology of surveillance and the moral complexities surrounding the job itself.

Gene Hackman shines as Harry Caul, a character that is unlike anything he played before or after. Quiet, reserved, and extremely private, Harry’s personality aligns seamlessly with his career as a surveillance expert. The whole job is centered around picking up as much information as possible from a safe distance and being able to leave without a trace. Wearing the same suit and trench coat every day, Harry excels in this discreet career path, as his personal life mirrors his workday. He lives by himself, he doesn’t have any personal belongings or noted hobbies or interests (with the exception of his saxophone), and he doesn’t interact with anyone in his apartment, becoming almost offended when they try to speak to him, as evidenced by his neighbor and his landlady going out of their way to wish him a happy birthday. It’s not a sense of entitlement or being angry with the world either. He’s a protagonist like no other. Harry just prioritizes being by himself, and he doesn’t want to get attached or make his presence known because he doesn’t want his private life to be opened to others since it could be used against him. Essentially, he exists in a paranoid state, has accepted it without panic, and lives life to hopefully leave it without a trace when the time comes. William Moran refers to him as “lonely and anonymous”, and it’s a fair description. Harry has this paranoid sense of thinking, magnified by his ever-important job that has affected lives, and it has led the 42-year-old to not necessarily a life of misery, but one of accepted loneliness and survival. He can’t let anyone get close, which is why Amy knows nothing about him, and he doesn’t have any close friends either. Though he works with Stan and is cordial with some colleagues in the field, it’s all surface level. Even when he takes a group of them back to his shop for a little party after the convention, it doesn’t feel right. It’s very out of character for who we know Harry to be at this point of the film. Of course, the afterparty becomes tense rather quickly, as borderline shyster Moran goes with them under the guise of wanting to party, but he hurls so many questions towards Harry, his work, his equipment, his life, and to eventually attempt to sell him on a partnership, that we see why Harry doesn’t let people in, especially because of his field of work and the people in it.

Everyone seems to have ulterior motives. Just as Harry lets his guard down for a second, it is almost immediately confirmed why he has kept up said guard for most of his adult life. First, there’s Meredith playing herself off as some woman wanting to get to know Harry, who is naturally suspicious of her advances. Through Meredith’s insistence and a little bit of alcohol involved, he is willing to have a conversation with her in private over fixing her relationship with her husband if her husband didn’t necessarily express his feelings outwardly to her (basically giving her a hypothetical that mirrors Harry’s relationship with Amy) and her moving in closer to Harry as a result. Second, there’s Moran embarrassing Harry by recording the private conversation Harry has with Meredith as a joke to show off his pen-mic transmitter invention. Third is when Harry is at his most vulnerable. While he’s in bed with Meredith thinking she’s still this innocent woman interested in him, he privately admits to her in a rare moment of weakness that he needs to destroy the tapes, how “I can’t let it happen again”, and “A family was murdered because of me” in a highly memorable, darkly-lit sequence where they get intimate while the eerie recording of Ann and Mark plays in the background. Once those words of Ann set in talking about the homeless person laying on the bench and how he used to be somebody’s baby boy with a fruitful family watching over him and how they’re all gone now, the religious Harry comes to the realization that he can’t just hand those tapes over. Even so, he’s double crossed because he had the audacity of opening up, a constant in his life that only works to pull him into his closeted life further. However, this is the genesis of Harry’s evolution as a person. For the first time, he decides he can’t look the other way. He needs to go with his gut feeling, and that is to try and stop another murder from taking place that he feels he’s responsible for. It’s a failure to act that he can’t live with as a Christian man and an admitted sinner, who still wants to be a better person in a job that almost doesn’t allow it, as least if you want to be considered the best.

He might be at the top, but he can’t live with this mental anguish any longer.

Though it’s not a focus, a big gear-grinding element of The Conversation is that it exposes professional jealousy among those who are successful, “friends” wanting to get ahead by any means necessary, and backstabbing at the highest order so one can take their spot from another. Paranoia stemming from his work has turned the jaded Harry Caul away from believing in the innocence of society and it has bled into his personality and outlook on life because of it. In that pivotal party sequence, his suspicions are only cemented, especially after Moran embarrasses Harry at his shop in front of people that he considers close enough to let come back to his private workspace. For a man that doesn’t let anyone in, and it takes a lot for him to trust anyone, the viewer can’t help but empathize with Harry, which is a testament to how good Hackman is as the protagonist. The audience sees him at his most vulnerable when he’s in his home and is able to play his music, or when he’s uncomfortable with those around him just wanting to get to know him because it makes him feel like they’re out to get him in some way. He doesn’t need to lash out at others or have some dark speech to detail this part of his personality. Nothing needs to be said. In a powerful performance, Hackman’s Harry Caul can work and be affected with the most minor of subtleties and dejected expressions, and this emptiness he exudes in public situations speak volumes to who he is as a person. At most, there is one tell-all moment in a dream sequence Harry has to give us insight into his backstory a bit, but the exact details of the information he gives out doesn’t change our opinion of the character. It’s strange. Really, it’s the act of finally giving out the information, whatever it may be, that makes us feel for him because we know how much it takes for Harry to reveal such things about himself. Though he speaks to this dream, ghost-like version of Ann about how he was paralyzed as a kid in his left arm and leg, and he couldn’t walk for six months, it’s not a sob story or anything. It’s more or less treated as a release for the character to get things off his chest, like how he almost drowned in a tub and “I remember being disappointed I survived”. It’s the release that we feel for him.

His retelling of his father introducing him to a friend of his and Harry responding by hitting the guy in the stomach for no reason and him dying a year later, as if he had something to do with it, is an example of a detail having no effect on what we think of Harry. It’s just his private trauma dumping to remind the audience he is a real person with feelings that have impacted the trajectory of his life. The exact details of his trauma aren’t necessarily important for us to understand why he feels the need to look into this case of Ann and Mark further, knowing he could have just taken the money and moved onto the next job like he’s done previously. Admittedly, this is one of two important parts of the story that I do take issue with. One is that as memorable as the ending is from a cinematic perspective, it doesn’t make sense because Harry could just pick up his things and move instead of going through with what he did. Though in Coppola’s defense, why let logic get in the way of such an awesome movie moment? Second and more importantly, Harry is considered to be the best in his field. Because of this, he takes on high profile jobs and clients. Why is he so surprised that a job like this one could involve someone’s death? Would he not deal with shady people and shady situations weekly with a career like this? He makes it clear to Stan that he doesn’t care what the people in the recordings say. His job is to just get as clear a recording as possible for the client. Why care all of a sudden now? Is it because he put that principle of his out there in the open, so he subconsciously started listening to the conversation when he never did before? I suppose that makes sense, but it just seems odd to me that he’s this dumbfounded over murder being a potential outcome, as I would assume the only people that pay for this type of work aren’t opposed to killing people to achieve their goals. Then again, this might make sense of Harry’s whole personality really. Usually, he would never pay attention to the words on his recordings because he doesn’t want to get personally involved, just like how he doesn’t want to get attached or involved with anyone in his personal life which includes his own girlfriend, someone he is okay breaking things off with after she asks too many questions.

Hell, the only reason he really brings back Stan to his job after he left to work for Moran wasn’t because he missed him as a co-worker, it was because he knew too much about his equipment and didn’t want his secrets to be shared. Harry has to shut this part of his brain off when listening to these intimate recordings of conversations, but he can’t help but listen to it once Stan gets mad about the mundane details of the conversation. That is when he hears Mark saying, “He’ll kill you if he gets the chance”, changing Harry’s entire life trajectory. Usually he wouldn’t care, but he can’t have a repeat of what happened in New York, which was devastating enough to lead him to leaving for San Francisco. Not everyone knows he used to work in New York, including his closest co-worker in Stan. It isn’t until Moran reveals this to their colleagues that they found out because Moran wanted to know what he did back in 1968. Outwardly, Harry tells others that his work had nothing to do with what happened because he was just doing his job of surveilling, but he suffers privately from it every day. He mentions it in passing during confession, and the viewer notices it in his lack of eye contact and energy when the absolute nuisance that Moran is reveals the grizzly details of Harry working for the attorney general’s office and how Harry somehow recorded a conversation on a bug-proof private boat between the president of a teamster local and his accountant about a phony welfare fund they set up that led to three people being murdered. Harry doesn’t intervene as Moran spouts off about how the accountant’s wife and kid were shaved and found naked and tied up in the house dead, with their heads found in different places. Still, Harry can’t flip out or a have a breakdown. He insists it had nothing to do with him, which is something Martin reiterates to the “disturbed” Harry later on when they steal the tapes back from him because they were afraid that he would start to feel self-conscious about them. With Moran revealing his past to the others, Harry just doubles down. He did his job of surveillance and turned in the tapes. He didn’t kill anyone. Someone else did. Technically, he’s right. That is what he was paid to do. He didn’t directly kill anyone.

Even Moran says the president thought the accountant talked when the news leaked, implying that the president did it. However, the blame can be rooted to Harry’s work because the news wouldn’t have been known otherwise. It’s unfair to look at Harry in this light and it’s something he lives with every waking day, but this disastrous aftermath was a great way to show the power Harry possesses in his position, the grim realities of this job, how serious Harry takes it, which is why he’s now stuck in this moral dilemma with Ann and Mark, and how dangerous the consequences of his work can be. It makes the audience ponder if they could look the other way to do their job or come to realize that they can’t just sit around when someone could die because of them. It’s a dangerous career, and when people spy on others or are paid to, they are bound to see something suspicious at some point. Harry seems to be the only one who acknowledges this, which is why he’s ignored the details of the recordings he works on for so long. Now that he let just an inch of information in his subconscious, he can’t let it go. Remember, “I’m not afraid of death… I am afraid of murder”.

A typical Gene Hackman character would be aggressive, louder, meaner, and willing to cause a disturbance in lieu of a goal, but that’s why Harry Caul might be one of his best roles because it’s the complete opposite of what we’re expecting. It works to a vast degree, which is why when he does start to take a stand, at least in the character’s own way, it’s a big deal. The usually subdued Harry would more than likely walk right past Martin when he saw him on the couch listening to his phone call at the convention, but he goes right up to him and refuses his intimidation tactics. After Martin brings up how the Director will be in this time around to receive the tapes, so there shouldn’t be any issues, a now disgruntled Harry tells him he’ll think about it to show him he can’t be pushed around. When you’re dealing with an actor with a such a well-known persona, it’s fascinating watching how well Gene Hackman’s portrayal of Harry Caul is under Francis Ford Coppola’s direction and how it completely shifts the audience’s perception of him as an actor. Harry shows his passion for what he does as if it’s an art form while explaining to Moran how he pulled off the Union Square job with three passes: a three-stage directional microphone, MOFSET amplifier of his own design, and conventionally tailing them with Paul. Hackman shows off his range like never before as Harry details his passionate about what he does despite so many of the hangups that come with it and it shows why he’s the best there is, as Moran stood there exposed for being nowhere near his level when given the same layout, since his guesses came off as playschool suggestions to what Harry actually did.

Speaking of Allen Garfield’s William Moran, in a just a few scenes, he may have cracked the top five list of one of the most annoying, can-somebody-kick-his-ass supporting characters in film. At the very least, he’s in the conversation, pun very much intended. From him stealing other people’s inventions to sell off as his own ideas, like him making a copy of the automatic recorder actuator, to talking aloud about how that guy stole his idea, his unethical tactics to try and get Harry to reveal more about himself and his equipment so he can one-up him in any way and then play innocent when Harry gets angry with him for overstepping, him not looking to learn from Harry but steal in the guise of working with him, and trying to embarrass Harry in front of everyone when Harry declines to work with him by stating he doesn’t need anyone, it’s clear that this carny of the surveillance field deserves zero respect. It’s an absolute travesty that nothing bad happened to him in the movie because I would have stood up and applauded.

One thing that did confuse me was when Harry tried to call Amy from the convention but was told there were no listings under her name. Is this because she up and left? Was she working for someone as well, which is why she was so interested in Harry’s personal life? The latter angle seems like a possibility because the paranoid avenues the story takes, but there’s no follow-up to it since Amy was only in one scene. Considering how quickly the timeline of events happens, it does seem odd that out of nowhere there wouldn’t be any records of where Amy is at.

The Conversation‘s well-researched aspects of surveillance, how someone like Harry would go about doing certain things to get evidence, like how he adjusts the hotel bathroom when he gets the adjoining room, and how well-trained of an ear he has to have, as well as how good he has to be at his job to continuously go over the same recordings and figure out a way to pick it apart further to get every last unheard detail out of it, is just as engrossing as the mystery surrounding him. It shows the difficulties of the job, the complexities of it, and how it STILL may lead you to the wrong conclusion. Absolutely fascinating in its presentation, it’s only heightened by its jazzy and simplistic piano score and striking visuals. The two best shots of the film other than the intrigue of the Union Square opening have to be between that eerie, horror-film like closeup of the jagged Flintstones episode on the television that Harry opens his eyes to after hearing the screaming in the other room or the bathroom scene following his investigation of a potential murder. That one will make you take a step back.

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is an intoxicating feature that gives us a jarring peak into the untrustworthy and evil world that we secretly live in, through the eyes and ears of someone who faces devious intentions by his employers and the people around him every day. It’s intelligent, it’s intense without being loud, and it makes you feel unsafe, with a POWERFUL finish for the ages. By the end, the mission is accomplished. The world seems smaller, and you start to realize how easy it is for people in control to find a way to keep a watchful eye on you, if they see fit. If someone as intelligent and aware of surveillance technology like Harry Caul is can miss a detail and still be had as an expert, despite all the measure he takes to be off the grid, how can you not feel the world closing in? How can you not feel outnumbered and as claustrophobic as he does? Maybe they are listening and watching every step we take. What are we going to do about it?

Wait, did you guys hear that?