The Conversation

Running time: 114 mins

Synopsis

Fifty years after its release, Francis Ford Coppola’s thriller now feels prophetic in its portrait of surveillance culture.

Between the box-office success of The Godfather parts I and II, Coppola wrote and directed this intimate study of paranoia which spoke to the wider unease around the Watergate scandal. Gene Hackman provides one of his most iconic performances as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that a couple he is spying on will be murdered. Coppola crafts an increasingly tense film which filters America’s political anxiety through a man who uncovers what is going on but is powerless to do anything about it.

Showing as part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour, a selection of films from the 2024 programme of Cinema Rediscovered, the Festival dedicated to the rediscovery and revival of great films.

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