Union Square, San Francisco. Noontime, December 2, 1972. A mime mimics passersby as a young couple walk around in circles, talking in fragments. We zoom in closer as the woman spies a derelict sleeping on a bench.
"I always think he was once somebody's baby boy," the woman sighs.
We aren't the only ones eavesdropping on this conversation. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) has two parabolic microphones and a guy carrying a tape recorder following their every move. Why? Don't ask him.
"I don't care what they're doing," he tells his associate Stan (John Cazale). "All I want is a nice fat recording." But Harry wants something more, it turns out, in this moody paranoia piece by director Francis Ford Coppola, shot between two "Godfathers" that won Best Picture awards and every bit as good as either of them. Not perfect, but very, very good, a film that captures the zeitgeist of the 1970s like a butterfly on a pin. Harry is a professional eavesdropper, yes, "the best bugger on the West Coast," but try as he might, he's not immune from the human mystery of his work.
You know you are watching a terrific film when you see Hackman sharing a scene with Robert Duvall and Harrison Ford, the latter in an early role as a weaselly majordomo. You know you are watching a subversive one when the three great actors are being upstaged by a Doberman. "There's not a laugh in the whole movie," Harry is told at one point, perhaps a wink from Francis regarding the heavy subject matter. But it is relevant, what with Watergate exploding at the time of the film's release and the question of surveillance a constant one.
I could have done without Allen Garfield's too-heavy turn as a rival of Harry's, or a detour between Harry and his girlfriend (a badly shot Teri Garr) that takes us nowhere. Yes, as many point out here, the main riddle of the film, having to do with the mystery couple and a stray line of conversation Harry picks up, doesn't exactly match up on later reflection. But it doesn't have to, because Coppola establishes early on, by focusing so much on Harry, that what we are dealing with here is subjective, not objective, reality. It's "Rashomon" wired for sound, and a perfect companion piece where reality itself was a twistable thing.
Great central work by Hackman, who according to Coppola's commentary track felt miserable in the role of Harry and looks it. Other superlative work includes David Shire's creepy and sad score for solo piano, Walter Murch's editing and sound "design" that captures the title conversation in all its odd, devolving permutations. It's amazing to me how anyone who lived through the 1970s can still totally buy into the enveloping mystery of the story, even if it does feature Han Solo and Shirley Feeney. (Cindy Williams, perhaps a bigger star later that decade than Ford or even Hackman as one-half of TV's "Laverne & Shirley", makes for a great object of Harry's bugging and, eventually, his tragic passion.)
In the end, "The Conversation" isn't really about the politics of surveillance, or the individual versus society. It's about a guy who realizes the world he watches has teeth, and that the sad derelict he overhears someone talking about may well be himself. No man is an island, even if some are better off that way.
"I have nothing personal, nothing of value," Harry tells us. The bitter brilliance of "The Conversation" is Coppola's way of showing us how much better off he would have been had he been right.
