Conspiracy thriller from the director of The Godfather. The movie will be screened on 35mm film from the collection of Gosfilmofond.
A sad surveillance expert in his forties, Harry Caul does not take his raincoat off even on a sunny day. One day he discovers that the lives of the two lovers employed by a monstrous corporation and whom he has been following are in danger. An understated and very personal film, shot between the first two parts of The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation brought Francis Ford Coppola a Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival as well as three Oscar nominations, and comes 33rd in the BBC’s 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films based on the votes of film critics from around the world.
The Conversation came out in the golden age of conspiracy thrillers—the 1970s, marked by the Watergate scandal in American politics. Other releases of the decade include Marathon Man (1976) directed by John Schlesinger, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) by Philip Kaufman and Alan J. Pakula’s paranoia trilogy Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974) and All the President's Men (1976). Interestingly, Coppola anticipated the scandal, when he wrote the script for The Conversation in 1966, inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966). In fact, his protagonist uses the same machines as the Nixon’s team. Released a few months after Nixon’s resignation, the film was accepted as social critique. Brilliantly and subtly directed, it works as a genre movie as well as a psychological and a political statement.
The Conversation was made by a team of star actors and filmmakers. Harrison Ford appeared in his first big role before his breakthrough in The Star Wars (1977); the first and immediately captivating scene was shot using wide-angle lenses by an Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who was later fired by Coppola because of creative disagreements and replaced by Bill Butler. The sound designer was the nine-time Oscar nominee Walter Murch, and the lead Gene Hackman, nominated for BAFTA and the Golden Globe for his portrayal of Harry Caul, calls this role his favorite.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
The Conversation
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
USA, 1974. 113 min. 18+