2¢FC continues its exploration of the late, great actor’s work with the moody 1974 Coppola thriller The Conversation
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The Pick: The Conversation (1974)
Gene Hackman was truly one of the greats, and in honor of his life we’re working our way through a sampling of his filmography – from old favorites, to some that we may be catching up with for the first time.
While Hackman was a prolific actor with a huge career that spanned multiple decades, I think in our true heart of hearts, most of us probably closely associate him with the 70s, in which he arguably has his most iconic run with of a string of hard-hitting classics, and collaborations with legendary directors and costars.
The Conversation was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and released at the height of his powers: his followup to The Godfather, and released just months before The Godfather Part II. And while those films are famously approachable and easy to appreciate, The Conversation is heavier and more demanding of its audience, dealing with themes like alienation, guilt, and paranoia, and – as acknowledged by Coppola – drawing inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.
The film is also famously one of only five to feature the legendary character actor John Cazale, who died in 1978 at the age of 42. All five were Best Picture nominees; three of them won. The Conversation wasn’t one of the winners, but the competition was stiff – it lost to The Godfather Part II… another Coppola joint which featured Cazale in what’s inarguably his most famous role.
Gene Hackman considered The Conversation to be one of his best performances, and this week the Two Cents Film Club explores why he’s right.
The Team:
Spencer Brickey
Released between The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2, The Conversation, in many ways, has been forgotten in the conversation (ba-dum-tisk) of best films of the ‘70s. For those in the know, though, is the understanding that The Conversation is not only one of the best films from Francis Ford Coppola, but one of the best films of the 1970’s.
A film that dives deeply into loneliness, and the paranoia that it can breed, The Conversation is a film about being so intimately close to someone under the least intimate means. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a quiet, reserved man, protective of his trade secrets, his life experiences, even his birthday. Yet, he excels at extracting information from people, pulling their secrets out of the air, recording them at their most private. He is a man who stutters and stares at the floor when he talks about the loss of love, but comes alive, full of charisma, when discussing the many tools he’s built for surveillance. He is a man who says he fears murder above all else, but when put in a situation to save another, he cowers and runs. He is a man that will rip his apartment down to the studs, destroying iconography of his faith, but won’t touch the one thing he does openly love, his saxophone, even though it is the most obvious place for a wiretap. Harry Caul is not a good man, barely a man at all; he has one purpose, and in that, he is competent above all else.
All of this works, of course, due to Gene Hackman’s performance. Hackman plays against type, his usually charismatic and fiery self disappearing into a shadow of a man. Hackman plays Caul as a nobody, a body filling a suit that moves with the current. His only purpose in this life is surveillance, and he is useless at everything else. It’s a role far outside of his wheelhouse, a role Hackman himself said was incredibly difficult to inhabit, as it went against all his acting instincts to go so muted.
What we get though, through all the compacting of instinct and emotion, is one of Hackman’s finest performances, transcending expectations, and creating an iconic performance in the ‘70s film canon.
Ed Travis
I had given The Conversation a couple of shots before, having understood it to be an American masterpiece that I should appreciate. But I was too young to grasp what the film had to say; had too little life experience. So while I think this was my third time seeing The Conversation, it was the first time the film saw me. Hackman’s Harry Caul is just turning 44 at the start of our tale. I myself just turned 45. What a weird experience to view this art that was locked into place in 1974 but was somehow just waiting for me to catch up to it and get on its level.
I think my perception of the film previously was that it was cold, distant, and analytical. Boy was I wrong. Harry is a tragic figure, often quiet and aloof, certainly distrustful and unwilling to share many of his feelings. But feel he does. Caul is an expert in his field, and deeply private, but he’s profoundly human and cares a lot about the cost that his work brings about for those he surveils. He has no idea how to relate to people, but wants profoundly to be able to connect and trust. Yet as the case he’s working unravels, in spite of his obvious expertise and technical prowess, Harry is duped and suckered continuously, by his peers, his competitors, lovers, and even the subjects of his surveillance. He’s a lost soul, struggling to find any kind of connection with the humans around him who seem to baffle him with their complexity and moral ambiguity. His Catholic roots seem to only have added extra layers of guilt and questioning of his chosen profession.
And this time around, watching The Conversation, the emotional power of the film I’d previously thought clinical really broke through. Whereas I’d struggled to relate to the curt and distrustful Harry Caul, I now viewed him as a tragically bleeding heart desperate to be understood, desperate to find love and understanding, only to be metaphorically snuffed out by a world that doesn’t feel the same moral compunctions that he does. Part of me wants to give Harry Caul a big hug, and the other part of me thinks: Yeah, maybe I am Harry Caul. Maybe we’re all Harry Caul, caught up and morally compromised in a system that demands complicity. Damn, Coppola, take it easy on me, will ya?
Justin Harlan
When it comes to this classic Hackman/Coppola joint, I’d like to keep The Conversation going, as it were. The others who have contributed to this post so far are really tapped in, but something about their analysis really bugs me. I can’t quite seem to track what it is exactly. But I will go on record to say that Hackman is genuinely better than you’ve heard.
Puns aside, I dug this one a good bit and almost entirely because of the late great Harry Call… excuse me, I mean Caul… himself. This is a type of thriller that often leave me bored or, at least, not nearly as “thrilled” as I’d like to be. And, despite being told repeatedly throughout my life by friends, critics, and all type of film lovers that Coppola is the GOAT, I’m very hit or miss on his films.
What Hackman does here, though, is make you care. Without him, it’s hard to believe that Caul would be nearly as captivating a character. There are certainly implicit stakes in the story, but Hackman really puts a face on those stakes, with charisma to spare. With each week of this Hackman watchalong marathon, it becomes more and more undeniable just how amazing an actor this man truly was.
In short, The Conversation deserves all the talk is gets and Hackman’s manner in which he can tap into our very souls is why.
Austin Vashaw
As these last few weeks have certainly demonstrated, Gene Hackman was a terrific actor with an absolutely huge range. With The Conversation, we get to see a rarer – but no less powerful – kind of performance from him. His Harry Caul, a surveillance spook, is a complex man with a lot of quiet emotions and foibles, both on and beneath the surface. He is awkward, timid, petty, guilt-ridden, and deeply private – or perhaps more accurately, deeply paranoid.
But is it paranoia if it’s true?
This was a first-time watch for me, and I was surprised by how different the film was from the procedural version in my head. The style incorporates dreamlike qualities and atmosphere (including, but not limited to, an actual nightmare) in its storytelling.
It’s worth noting that a pre-fame Harrison Ford is terrific here in a now rare antagonist role, though at the time it followed another in American Graffiti. His next film, set in a galaxy far, far away, would change audience perception forever.
Goodbye to a Great: TWO CENTS Celebrates Gene Hackman
Two films still remain in our titanic selection of some of the late, great Gene Hackman’s biggest and best performances. Feel free to join us in discussing these upcoming entries!
May 12 – Enemy of the State – (Prime Video – 2 hours 12 minutes)
May 19 – The Royal Tenenbaums – (Hulu or Digital Rental / Purchase – 1 hour 50 minutes)
