| | Conversation DVD (3 Customer Reviews)
| Category | Action/Adventure DVDs, Dramas Movies, Thriller Videos, Mystery, Suspense, Recommended, Murder, Classic, Essential Cinema, Detective, Psychodrama, Disturbing | | Starring | Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, Elizabeth MacRae, Allen Garfield, John Cazale, Michael Higgins | | Director | Francis Ford Coppola | | Co-Producer | Fred Roos | | Composer | David Shire | | Costume Designer | Aggie Guerard Rodgers | | Director of Photography | Bill Butler | | Editor | Walter Murch, Richard Chew | | Producer | Francis Ford Coppola | | Production Designer | Dean Tavoularis | | Screenwriter | Francis Ford Coppola | | Sound Design | Walter Murch, Art Rochester |
Closed Captioned; Bio/Filmographies; Soundtrack English; Soundtrack French; Director's Comments; Dolby Digital 5.1 Re Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION is a towering achievement, a masterfully constructed portrait of one man's descent into madness. Gene Hackman delivers a devastating performance as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who gets paid to invade the privacy of strangers. The film's classic opening shot is a long, slow zoom into Union Square in San Francisco, as a young couple, Mark (Frederic Forrest) and Ann (Cindy Williams), are having what seems like an otherwise mundane conversation. However, when it is revealed that Harry and his assistant Stanley (John Cazale) are eavesdropping from a nearby van, it becomes clear that something more serious is happening. Later, after Harry painstakingly reconstructs the conversation from several different audio sources, he uncovers a snippet of dialogue that unsettles him. Suspicious of his client's motives for wanting the tape, Harry becomes uncharacteristically worried about the people he may have endangered, sending him into a dangerous mental tailspin.
With Harry Caul, Coppola and Hackman have managed to create one of cinema's most unforgettable characters, a man who appears to be in control on the outside but who is, in fact, crumbling on the inside. Though Teri Garr, Harrison Ford, and Allen Garfield deliver standout supporting turns, THE CONVERSATION is Hackman's show. Inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni's BLOW UP (1966), THE CONVERSATION in turn went on to influence Brian De Palma's own surveillance thriller, BLOW OUT (1981). Theatrical release: April 7, 1974
Shot on location in San Francisco, California.
THE CONVERSATION was made by Francis Ford Coppola in the time between THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART II.
The film was written over five years before production began.
Tony Scott's 1998 film, ENEMY OF THE STATE, makes numerous references to THE CONVERSATION. Gene Hackman's character in Scott's film, Brill, is essentially an extension of Harry Caul character.
THE CONVERSATION was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1995.
In 1975, Coppola became the first person to ever receive two Oscar nominations for Best Director in the same year (the other film being THE GODFATHER PART II). Conversation Quotes/Excerpts: "I'm not afraid of death, but I am afraid of murder."--Harry Caul (Gene Hackman)
"I'm not following you, I'm looking for you. There's a big difference."--Martin Stett (Harrison Ford) to Caul
"There's no moment between human beings that I cannot record."--Bernie Moran (Allen Garfield) Conversation Reviews: "...Subdued, wrenching, beautifully calibrated....Thrillingly uncompromised..." -- Rating: A
-- Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly "...A taut, intelligent thriller..."
-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times "...Too few movie lovers have seen Francis Ford Coppola's cult masterpiece THE CONVERSATION..."
-- Mike Clark, USA Today "...Coppola's spare thriller works as a brilliant deconstruction of the medium..."
-- Daniel Webb, Total Film "Francis Ford Coppola's conspiracy thriller stands up well 30 years on."
-- Uncut Staff, Uncut "Gene Hackman gives a perfect performance as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who stumbles on an ominous conversation that wasn't meant for his ears or anyone else's."Wall Street Journal Conversation | List Price | $9.99 (You save $3.04) | | Studio | Paramount Home Entertainment | | Orig Year | 1974 | | DVD Encoding | Region 1 | | All Time Sales Rank |  2666  | | CD Universe Part number | 1138006 | | Catalog number | 23074 | | Discs | 1 | | Release Date | Dec 12, 2000 | | Rating | PG (MPAA) | | Running Time | 113 Minutes | | Additional Info | Widescreen | | Movie Details | Color; Dolby Surround Sound; Digitally Processed; HiFi Sound; Stereo Sound; AC-3 Sound; Widescreen; Sensormatic |
Conversation Movie Review Average Rating: (4 out of 5 stars)   Not up to standard
The movie was OK but not up to standards of "Target" and "Full Moon in Bluewater"
Submitted by higinb (Nine Mile Falls, Wa) 
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vere good movie
one of the best even if its old
Submitted by a reviewer (saudia arabia)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No  "We'll be listening."
The dreadfully real technology revealed during the Watergate investigations lent a special relevance to Francis Ford Coppola's film about wiretapping. However, the film's astonishingly prophetic script was written five years before the film was made and the Watergate scandal broke. It is Coppola's most successfully realized work to date. In "The Conversation", Coppola combines the technological monsters we know are real with those we suspect to be real and focuses finally and most ruthlessly on one person no one thinks much about: the man doing the listening.
Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), is a security specialist who performs wiretapping and eavesdropping operations for powerful clients. A requirement of the job is a profound personal detachment. A professional, he is a solitary soul; he relates most actively to the world via the technology at his disposal. Even his hobby, playing the saxophone along with jazz records, relies on his interaction with impersonal strangers. He evinces a neurotic fear of precisely what he does to others; he is absolutely phobic about his privacy, keeps an unlisted phone number and shuns all social contact, the exception being his girlfriend (Teri Garr). Throughout the film, regardless of the weather, he wears a transparent raincoat, as if to sanitize himself from his environment. At confession, he admits to stealing newspapers. Only a virtuoso performance by Gene Hackman incorporates these striking contradictions within a plausible character; Harry's career forces him to maintain an elaborate and at times ridiculous system of repressed instincts, rather like Maupassant, who disliked the Eiffel Tower so much that he ate lunch in its observation deck every day so he wouldn't have to look at it.
As a thriller plain and simple, the film is without peer. It has a slow and careful pace at first that accelerates to moments of indescribable fright. There is a bathroom scene that will make you afraid ever to use indoor plumbing again and a twist ending so completely surprising and convincing as to change the meaning of every scene in the film and make the denouement of "Psycho" seem predictable in comparison. Coppola was not the first filmmaker to present a nightmare world of humans without humanity or human rights. But his nightmare is the most convincing because it is the world in which we live.
Submitted by filmfactsman (Beverly Hills, CA, USA)
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Conversation DVD Region 1
Keep Case
Single Side - Dual Layer
Anamorphic Widescreen - 2.35
Letterbox - 2.35
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
Dolby Digital Mono - French
Subtitles - English - Optional
Additional Release Material:
Featurette: CLOSE-UP ON THE CONVERSATION
Trailers: Original Theatrical Trailer
Audio Commentary:
1. Francis Ford Coppola - Director
2. Walter Murch - Editor
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