Before there was the psychological paranoia of Pi or the unrelenting obsession explored in Insomnia, Francis Ford Coppola explored these human complexities in stirring detail in 1974's The Conversation.
Hot off the success of a little movie called The Godfather, Coppola wrote the tale of Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who finds himself immersed in a paranoid world of murder and betrayal and unable to come up for air even at the film's end.
Hired by a man known only as "The Director," Harry is sent to record a couple's conversation in a busy city square. Because of tragic events in Harry's life that occurred years earlier, he begins to obsess that a horrific murder is in the works and that he is the only person who can stop it.
Sound design in film took a giant leap forward with this movie, as listening to it on any sound system will reveal. Before we are psychologically immersed in Harry's world, we are first audibly immersed in his work as he tries to clean the audio from the distorted bits and pieces of recordings he's gathered.
As we watch him turn dials and knobs, the audio surrounding us fades in and out, clearer and fuzzier. The grating and sometimes disturbing sound elements work together in a brutally spectacular cacophony that coincides with the soundtrack to the film.
One of the film's best scenes employs this technique as Harry closes in on the truth behind his client's motives. As he stakes out a hotel room, he begins having daydreams (or daymares perhaps) of murder and blood as violent high-pitched artifacts of sound startle us into the same panic mode that Harry finds himself in.
Dare I say it, you could almost see how Stanley Kubrick borrowed elements from this movie and snuck them into his horror masterpiece, The Shining.
Beyond top-notch technical elements, the cast is nothing short of all-star as well. Gene Hackman plays Harry, our sax-playing protagonist.
Even 30 years ago, Hackman was able to turn up his notable gruff offstandish-ness that his characters are prone to nowadays.
The prematurely deceased (and sadly always cast in a supporting role) John Cazale plays Harry's assistant. Here's a guy who knew how to pick 'em -- five movies in his lifetime and everyone is on the Internet Movie Databases' Top 250 movies list.
Rounding out the troupe are Teri Garr, Robert Duvall and a deliciously evil Harrison Ford as the Director's assistant.
The film's ending acts like all good pieces of cinematic art should -- it will get different reactions depending on the viewer. You know what happens, but you don't. Just check message boards and reviews on the Internet if you don't believe me; people debate this one as heavily as Donnie Darko.
The Conversation, simply put, was well ahead of its time. It set the stage and rules for countless films after its coming and has stood the test of time, holding its own against its more modern imitators after all these years. See if you can understand what Harry couldn't in the conversation.
