The Conversation / Enemy of the State

[Peripart]

I haven't a huge amount to say about The Conversation really, but I taped it off the TV recently, and it's a real slow-burner of a conspiracy thriller. Gene Hackman is great as Harry Caul, a man married to his job to the point of obsession, who is given an assignment by shady agencies to use his surveillance skills to eavesdrop on a conversation, but of course, things don't go as planned, and he becomes an unwitting pawn in other people's schemes.

The film is 30 years old now, but you can see its influence in many subsequent movies, the recent Primer to name but one.

I just wondered what others made of this picture. Incidentally, I mention Enemy of the State in the thread title, too, because as well as being a pretty good Will Smith film (and therefore worthy of mention in itself), it features Gene Hackman playing a reclusive ex-government surveillance expert named Edward Lyle. Wikipedia notes the similarity between the two characters, but I like to imagine that they are actually the same man - it is very easy to see Enemy of the State as a kind of adrenaline-packed sequel to The Conversation. For anyone who enjoys a good "they're out to get you" type of film, don't watch "Conspiracy Theory" - watch these!

After I post this, I'll doubtless find that there's already a thread on one or both of these films. If so, BUMP! It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

 

[Spookdaddy]

The Conversation is one of my favourite films - it was the first DVD I bought once I'd caught up with the technology. Hackman is superb.

Although a pretty obvious aspect, it being a film based around covert surveillance, the way sound is used is pretty impressive. In fact I've got a feeling that cinemas at the time couldn't reproduce the soundtrack to its full effect. Coppola was interviewed on Radio 4 when the DVD was released and I seem to remember he was quite exited about the way the DVD could get over the original recording in a way that hadn't been possible in the cinema. In a way I think this is why the film feels quite slow - because so much of what drives it is aural rather than physical. For ages I thought I was the only person who'd ever seen The Conversation until a Scottish friend started raving about it in the pub one night - he's a sound engineer, so maybe that explains it.

 

[MrRING]

I always thought The Conversation was quite influenced by the original Blowup. It involves a photographer who, while developing film he shots, believes he has discovered proof of a murder. It's a good film, but it doesn't really devlop the mystery in a normal way to make it a good conspiracy thriller.

And another, more traditional thriller worth watching is Three Days of the Condor:

A mild mannered CIA researcher, paid to read books, returns from lunch to find all of his co-workers assassinated. "Condor" must find out who did this and get in from the cold before the hitmen get him.

 

[dreeness]

Speaking of conspiratorial, remember The Parallax View? I really liked the "slide show" sequence of that.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s76parallax.html

That psychotic little montage is a great film all by itself, it would be fun to show it to unsuspecting people, heh.

 

[GNC]

The Parallax View is my favourite of the 70s conspiracy movies, it's the most convincing (next to All the President's Men, I suppose) and threatening one. Although The Conversation is pretty damn good too.