Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1978 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-08-01
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 108 minutes

Special Features

• Trailer
  
• Close up on The Conversation
  
• Audio commentary with Francis Ford Coppola
  
• Audio commentary with editor/designer Walter Murch

DVD Technical Information:

• Running Time: 108 minutes
  
• Region Code: 2

Synopsis
Gene Hackman stars in THE CONVERSATION as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert whose job is taping the lives and conversations of others. With the character of Caul, director Francis Ford Coppola has created a complex role for which Hackman is perfect--a man in complete control on the outside but breaking down within. Teri Garr, Harrison Ford, and Elizabeth MacRae co-star, but Hackman, in top form in every scene, is the real reason to watch this true classic.The stirring, classic opening shot of the film is a long, slow zoom into Union Square in San Francisco. A young couple, Mark (Frederic Forrest) and Ann (Cindy Williams), are having what seems like a mundane conversation while Harry and his assistant Stanley (John Cazale) eavesdrop from a nearby van. But when Harry carefully analyses his tape, he uncovers bits of unsettling dialogue. Suspicious of his client's motives for wanting the tape, he becomes uncharacteristically worried about the people he may have endangered.

Customer Reviews

Hard going indeed
I have to agree with the other two recent reviews which found this movie less than entertaining. I fell asleep twice watching this - it's technically very good, yes, but entertaining? Certainly not. Give it a miss.

Claustrophobic paranoia at its best...
Jack is a mercenary, a spy, a technical artist and a troubled soul. In the most impressive performance of his career, Gene Hackman portrays a lonely private detective, at the top of his game, paid by companies and private individuals to listen in on rivals, in business or in love. He tries to maintain detachment, but when a case he works on appears to be as important as life and death, his intrigue and his paranoia are irrepressible.

This is a supreme movie, that confirmed, if the Godfather trilogy were not enough, that Coppola is up there with the greatest of the great Directors. A brilliant portrayal of the downward spiral of paranoia, loneliness and nobility.

The score is sparse, but scintillating. Jazz piano chords portraying Jack's dissent and above all his intrigue. The camera work complements this brilliantly, and stuffy offices, warehouses and bedrooms add to the disquieting mood.

The finale is genius, showing the link between meaning and context, where subtle changes of tone can give a seemingly banal sentence remarkable hidden menace.

Like watching paint dry
The slowest, dullest, most overrated (critics love it) movie I've ever sat through. At least watching paint dry isn't confusing. Dense, turgid, plodding repetition bury any seed of a plot there may have been. With an infuriatingly obtuse ending, thin, mumbled dialogue and baffling dream sequences, it is the only bad (no, TERRIBLE) film I've ever seen Gene Hackman in.

No doubt it is technically very good in terms of direction, a masterclass in acting technique, a superb character study etc. but it is horribly inaccessible, boringly indeed excessively layered, like some technically brilliant but esoterically contrived pretentious piece of avant-garde rubbish that the snobs/critics argue you're not supposed to "get".

If you fancy a bit of intelligent entertainment, give this dreadful movie the widest possible berth. If you want to be "challenged" try a Rubik's cube or mountaineering or something else designed to be challenging rather than entertaining. This tortuous film is strictly for the masochists.