Screen/Society--"The Conversation" (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

Film Screening: "The Conversation"
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974, 113 min, USA, English, DCP)

NEW 50TH ANNIVERSARY 4K RESTORATION

"He'd kill us if he had the chance." Coppola's first film after The Godfather is a masterpiece of sustained suspense and paranoia, starring Gene Hackman as surveillance expert Harry Caul, a recluse who becomes entangled in a web of conspiracy after a mystery client hires him to record the titular conversation of a young couple. Winner of the 1974 Palme d'Or at Cannes and nominated for three Academy Awards, THE CONVERSATION holds a mirror to the paranoia of the early 70s.

"THE CONVERSATION remains a potent paranoid thriller, at once a deeply personal work for its director and one of the defining artistic documents of a cynical era." - Zachary Barnes, The Wall Street Journal

"THE CONVERSATION was ripe for the Watergate era...Coppola's wasn't the first movie to hang our anxieties on the mechanisms of surveillance...but it stood at the threshold of a new age in technology, filmmaking and the stories we tell about the world we live in." - Ty Burr, The Washington Post

"An immaculate thriller, a study in paranoia and loneliness, partly inspired by Antonioni's BLOW-UP, and released as the Watergate scandal was unfolding, [with] one of Gene Hackman's greatest performances." - Philip French, The Guardian