The Conversation (1974)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.
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4 films that influenced The Conversation
What critics say influenced The Conversation
(1) In generic terms, the film is a psychological thriller that pays stylistic homage to Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) in its use of repetition and its parsing of sounds rather than images to create ambiguity, and to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) in its depiction of a hotel murder.
Technically brilliant, “The Conversation” does in aural terms what Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” does in visual terms; Brian De Palma’s 1981 “Blow-Out” will combine elements of both pictures.
In structure, its inspiration is Antonioni's Blow-up, and in construction it stands as an example of a genuine collaboration between the genius who left to make his next masterpiece and the genius who stayed behind to finish this one.
(1) In generic terms, the film is a psychological thriller that pays stylistic homage to Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) in its use of repetition and its parsing of sounds rather than images to create ambiguity, and to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) in its depiction of a hotel murder.
As he is played by Gene Hackman in “The Conversation,” an expert wiretapper named Harry Caul is one of the most affecting and tragic characters in the movies; he ranks with someone like Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” or the pathetic captives of the middle class in John Cassavetes ’s “ Faces .”
His work on THX 1138 and Apocalypse Now is legendary.