So much average

Sadly Over-hyped

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Looking at various lists on IMDb,I found a great list by Red-Barracuda,which had a rather overlooked Francis Ford Coppola title near the top. Catching up on eps of Screen Junkies News the next day,I was taken aback when one of the hosts picked the same film as the best underrated movie by a famous director,which led to me joining the listening party.View on the film: Attempting to get the film made since the early 60's,writer/directing auteur Francis Ford Coppola proves that it was worth him spending all that time fighting for this title with immaculate stylisation. Changing cinematographers in mid-production, Coppola impressively keeps the visual motifs consistent, with Caul's spy centre given a dour brown appearance where extended takes hold on Caul's worker drone mindset the surroundings build,whilst Caul's mysterious baker is given a chic, Wall Street elite tower. Playing David Shire unsettling electronic score when filming and having Walter Murch cast the sound montages, Coppola manipulates the soundtrack with masterful procession,as Caul's obsession to unscramble the audio reels the viewer into piecing together their own interpretation of the recordings.Keeping in the dark the reason the recording has been made for the first half, the screenplay by Coppola brilliantly records Caul as a meek Winston Smith,who never questions the people who are paying him,and treats the taping he makes as a mundane part to his lonely life. Uncoiling Caul's obsession, Coppola plays a sly line in misdirection which cleverly mis-matches what is seen and what is heard,and leads into an ending that turns Caul into one of the plumbers of paranoia in the era. Peeling away all the movie star charm,Gene Hackman gives an outstanding performance as Caul,who Hackman squeezes into every corner of doubt and anxiety, by listening to all the conversations.

The most overrated movie I have ever watched,complete garbage. Gene Hackman may be a great actor,but this movie sucked.Stay away,save your money.I have no idea,why this dreadful movie is so highly rated and considered a classic.The boredom of watching for almost 2 hours and seeing nothing interesting happen,is a reason to give this a miss.I will not bother going into the story too much,as there is not much to say.

"The Conversation" feels rather overblown to me. The plot is a bit on the thin side but Gene Hackman gives another great performance as the surveillance expert who doesn't always enjoy his work. He is cast against type here and is easily up to the task. Hackman is much more reserved, unassuming and slightly withdrawn from the world. He lives for his work and not much else. He doesn't seem to have much in the way of friends and prefers it that way. Look out for Harrison Ford in a small role as a Government man who avoids answering Gene Hackman's questions. Parts of "The Conversation" work but the film doesn't quite gell as a whole. A shame as Francis Ford Coppola's direction is very good and the photography is effective.

Great movie and comprehensible that both FFC and Gene Hackman claim this to be their own favorite among those where they had their fingers in.The film starts with a bird's eye view on San Francisco's Union Square and the camera is zooming in onto a street clown who is molesting all kind of people with his grimace. Among them there is a man feeling uncomfortable of being put into the center of attention and therefore tries to ignore the clown and to get out of his way. Soon we know why. The man is a surveillance expert who is observing the wiretap operation on a young couple, which is walking around the square. We start hearing conversation scraps of those being spied on and from this very beginning, one is torn into a story, which in the end is turned upside down.Did the couple know that it was the target of a wiretap operation? Did the spied on couple mention certain things in their conversation on purpose and in a manipulative intent? Is it always easy for a surveillance expert to live with the consequences of his business results? Has the surveillance expert only been a chess piece in a greater game he could not oversee? Things are not quite clear in the end or are they? At the very end, we see the disillusioned Protagonist playing the sax in his own apartment, which he has just devastated in order to find the bug, which was presumably used for spying on the spy. According to me a great philosophical ending.Besides, the movie features a young Harrison Ford in an impressive side role, which he plays in a cool and mysterious way. This is so much better than he being Indiana Jones. Then there is this special atmosphere from the 70's, which is quite evident in the movie but maybe this only has a certain charm for someone like me who has still experienced this period