Shades Of Today In Coppola’s ‘The Conversation’

From February 18 to 25, “The Conversation,” Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 masterpiece of societal paranoia in the guise of a techno thriller, comes to Sag Harbor Cinema in a new 35mm print personally supervised by Coppola himself.

“I’m happy the movie became the very thing it was about — invasion of privacy and its erosive impact on both victims and perpetrators,” said Coppola, who wrote and directed the film and always counted “The Conversation” as his most personal film. “This was my goal when I conceived it over 40 years ago, and to my surprise, the idea still resonates today.”

A smaller, more intimate film that was in the works before Coppola found commercial success with “The Godfather,” “The Conversation” turned out to be prescient, as its release coincided with the Watergate scandal. Today, the film about surveillance, miscommunication and the importance of recorded sound seems just as contemporary and meaningful.

Drawing part of his inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow Up” and Herman Hesse’s novel “Steppenwolf,” as well as John Cassavetes’s use of sound, Coppola centers the film on Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) a lonely, devoutly catholic wiretapper who gets caught in the complex plot he is supposed to investigate. Occasionally credited as the “co-creator” of the film, Walter Murch brought sheer brilliance to the sound and editing of the film.

Winner of the 1974 Palme d’Or at Cannes and nominated for three Oscars including Best Picture (losing out to Coppola’s own “The Godfather: Part II”), “The Conversation” features a cast of future stars, including John Cazale, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, Frederick Forsyth, and Cindy Williams. The minimalist piano music by David Shire is considered one of the great film scores of the era.

Tickets are available at sagharborcinema.org. Sag Harbor Cinema is at 90 Main Street, Sag Harbor.

Dir. Francis Ford Coppola

USA, 1974; 113 minutes, in English

Rated PG

Lonely wiretapping expert and devout Catholic Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired to record a seemingly innocuous conversation in San Francisco’s Union Square between two lovers. Upon re-hearing the tapes, however, Caul believes he may be putting the couple in danger if he turns the material over to his client (Robert Duvall). But what one hears can ultimately turn out to be quite different from what was actually recorded.