Conversation

UPC: 031398144885

Studio: Lionsgate

MPAA Rating: PG   Contains:[Adult Situations, Questionable for Children, Adult Language]

Summary: Made between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), and in part an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni's art-movie classic Blow-Up (1966), The Conversation was a return to small-scale art films for Francis Ford Coppola. Sound surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired to track a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest), taping their conversation as they walk through San Francisco's crowded Union Square. Knowing full well how technology can invade privacy, Harry obsessively keeps to himself, separating business from his personal life, even refusing to discuss what he does or where he lives with his girlfriend, Amy (Teri Garr). Harry's work starts to trouble him, however, as he comes to believe that the conversation he pieced together reveals a plot by the mysterious corporate "Director" who hired him to murder the couple. After he allows himself to be seduced by a call girl, who then steals the tapes, Harry is all the more convinced that a killing will occur, and he can no longer separate his job from his conscience. Coppola, cinematographer Bill Butler, and Oscar-nominated sound editor Walter Murch convey the narrative through Harry's aural and visual experience, beginning with the slow opening zoom of Union Square accompanied by the alternately muddled and clear sound of the couple's conversation caught by Harry's microphones. The Godfather Part II and The Conversation earned Coppola a rare pair of Oscar nominations for Best Picture, as well as two nominations for Best Screenplay (The Godfather Part II won both). Praised by critics, The Conversation was not a popular hit, but it has since come to be seen as one of the artistic high points of the decade, as well as of Coppola's career. Its atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, combined with its obsessive loner antihero, made it prototypical of the darker "American art movies" of the early '70s, as its audiotape storyline also made it seem eerily appropriate for the era of the Watergate scandal. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Category: Thriller

Awards: Best Editing – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Soundtrack – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Soundtrack – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Soundtrack – British Academy of Film and Television Arts U.S. National Film Registry – Library of Congress Best Director – Directors Guild of America Best Picture - Drama – null Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama – null Best Director – null Best Screenplay – null Best Original Screenplay – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Picture – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Sound – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Sound – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences International Grand Prix – Cannes Film Festival Best Picture – National Board of Review Best Actor – National Board of Review Best Director – National Board of Review Film Presented – Telluride Film Festival Best Picture – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Screenplay – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Director – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Picture - Drama – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Editing – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Director – National Society of Film Critics

Features: Audio commentary with Francis Ford Coppola
Audio Commentary with Editor Walter Murch

Never-Before-Seen Interview with Francis Ford Coppola and Composer David Shire

Never-Before-Seen Archival Screen tests
Never-Before-Heard Archival audio of Francis Ford Coppola dictating the original script
Never-Before-Seen Discussion with Francis Ford Coppola about his early film exercise, "No Cigar"


"Close-up on The Conversation" featurette

Archival on-set interview with Gene Hackman

Conversation

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 10/25/2011

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Alternate Wide Screen

Audio: DHMA null

Runtime: 113 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English

Subtitles: English,Spanish

Mark Deming

Though it was commercially lost in the shuffle between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, The Conversation ranks among the finest films of Francis Ford Coppola's career. Drawn on a more intimate canvas than the Godfather epics or Apocalypse Now, it's a compelling and expertly constructed chamber piece about the nature of privacy and the troubling gray area between facts and truth; it was also remarkably prescient, coming out just as the Watergate scandal was making surveillance a major issue in the American consciousness. Gene Hackman delivers a typically expert performance as Harry Caul, who makes his living finding out what others are doing. As a consequence, Caul has become an obsessively private man haunted by guilt and incapable of trusting anyone, and Hackman and Coppola mold him into an indelible character whose moral and professional sides are at constant war. Coppola also used his soundtrack with uncommon intelligence; in a decade in which the attention paid to film sound would increase by leaps and bounds, The Conversation was a breakthrough in using its soundtrack not just to convey dialogue and music but to deepen the story, as well as providing the ultimate screen example of the adage, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." The Conversation is a subtle film that best reveals its details through repeat viewings, though even on a first viewing it's a brilliant cautionary tale whose message has become all the more potent with the passage of time and the further rise of technology. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Timothy Carey  Actor 
Elizabeth MacRae  Actor 
Mark Wheeler  Actor 
Robert Duvall  Actor 
Robert Shields  Actor 
Phoebe Alexander  Actor 
Michael Higgins  Actor 
Francis Ford Coppola  Director 
Francis Ford Coppola  Producer 
Francis Ford Coppola  Screenwriter 
David Shire  Composer (Music Score) 
Gene Hackman  Actor 
John Cazale  Actor 
Allen Garfield  Actor 
Frederic Forrest  Actor 
Cindy Williams  Actor 
Teri Garr  Actor 
Harrison Ford  Actor 

Country: USA