The Conversation

Between making the epic The Godfather and its sequel, Francis Ford Coppola made this thriller about a reclusive surveillance expert, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman).

Opening with an understated aerial zoom down into a busy New York park, the lunchtime chatter fizzing and buzzing into audibility over Caul's equipment, Coppola signals his intent to make a small, expertly crafted film. Self-consciously stripped of the excesses that he would lavish upon Apocalypse Now, The Conversation is the director's minor masterpiece, distinguished by a career-best performance from Gene Hackman.

The plot unspools with Caul's painstaking piecing together of a conversation recorded on the park between two lovers, Mark (Frederic Forrest) and Ann (Cindy Williams). Initially innocous, further investigation hints at darker motives: Mark says "He'd kill us if he got the chance," and suddenly we wonder if adulterers are in danger, or if they planning a murder of their own.

Caul affects disinterest, his only concern is to clean up the recording and deliver it to Harrison Ford's sinuous executive. But Harry's obsession with remaining aloof and utterly private is about to unravel.

With masterful editing from Walter Murch, repeatedly looping the conversation through the action to bring out its different meanings and portents, and supporting roles of washed-out losers and loners (the late John Cazale is particularly convincing as Caul's ratty unshaven assistant) The Conversation is an intimate thriller that shows off an array of talent at its peak.