The Conversation

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

1974 was Francis Ford Coppola’s year. He won Oscars for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay for The Godfather, Part II. But he was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay for The Conversation, and that movie was also competing for Best Picture. This film is a cautionary tale about the invasion of privacy in a world of increasingly sophisticated technology, so its theme is relevant for us today. Coppola acknowledged the influence of the movie Blow-Up (which was analyzed in another post on this site) with its themes of observation and voyeurism, taking responsibility for the outcomes of surveillance, and whether what is perceived actually represents reality.

The title of the film sounds like a sociable communication, suggesting a couple of people talking to each other. But when someone listens in and records individuals speaking to each other, an ominous element is added to the proceedings. The first shot of the movie is from above looking down on a public city area, which makes the people below seem insignificant from such a high viewpoint. But, the perception changes as the camera pulls in and focuses on a mime (implying something artificial is occurring, a performance, which is a foreshadowing) who then leads us to Harry Caul (Gene Hackman, who should have received an Oscar nomination). His last name sounds like “call” associating his name to a phone conversation which can be heard and recorded. IMDb also notes that his name was in fact supposed to be “Call,” but a typo turned it into “Caul,” and Coppola liked it because it is the word for a birth defect that involves a membrane surrounding the head. The name could point to Harry’s insulated existence. There is a man with a gun-shaped microphone (implying that listening devices can be dangerous) who looks downward through a telescopic lens from the roof of a building at a young man and woman. Harry is near them. Their conversation is being monitored, and due to interference the sound becomes distorted electronically at times, suggesting the secondhand and possibly inaccurate way that an eavesdropper hears things.

Harry goes into a van which contains surveillance equipment. The vehicle has reflective windows so one can only see out, not in. Two pretty girls apply their lipstick by looking at their reflection in the van’s windows. Stan (John Cazale), who works with Harry, says inside the van that he wants the girls to show him a little “tongue,” as he photographs them. This act of voyeurism shows the violation of the young girls’ privacy. Harry tells Stan to pay attention to his recordings, so he is both offended by the other man’s crude behavior, and he also wants to stay focused on the job. They are observing Ann (Cindy Williams) telling Mark (Frederic Forrest), that she has spotted a man with a hearing aid following them, so one of Harry’s men has been compromised. The fact that Ann is suspicious of being spied upon tells us that there is something that the couple supposedly want to keep secret. Harry’s man was carrying a shopping bag that has a package that looks like it was bought at a store, but which is actually wired for sound. The image suggests that things may not be what they seem. Stan asks who is even interested in the couple, and Harry says he doesn’t know. Stan says maybe the Justice Department or the Internal Revenue Service are involved. They don’t even know the purpose of their sneaky activity, which shows how removed these men are from knowing what is actually going on. Harry says he doesn’t care what they are talking about, he only wants his recording. For him, his profession should be impersonal, but he is dealing with persons, and thus, his work fosters becoming detached and unfeeling about those he spies upon. We learn later that he is working for a private, non-government firm.

Harry goes home to his apartment which has multiple locks and an alarm, which illustrates how paranoid he has become because he knows, through his job, how exposed people are. A fellow tenant wished Harry a happy birthday before he entered his place, and then he finds a gift from the apartment building manager. He calls her and wants to know how the gift was placed in his home, considering it is equipped with an alarm. She tells Harry that she has a key for emergencies like fires. He tells her he has nothing of value so he doesn’t care about his belongings getting burned up. He says he only values that the key to his place is the sole one. He is a suspicious loner whose most valued possession is his privacy, which is ironic, since he violates the privacy of others. She also knows it is his forty-fourth birthday, and he doesn’t understand how she knows about his age and birth date. He says he will now have his mail sent to a post office box with a combination so no one can have a key to it. He takes off his pants while he is talking to her, symbolically lowering his shields in his own sanctuary. It appears that his only pleasure is to play the saxophone along with some jazz heard on his sound system.  But, he plays alone, with a recording substituting for live musicians, which stresses his solitary nature.

Harry goes to work at his factory-like shop, which reflects his dehumanized personality, and which is stocked with inanimate electronic equipment. Stan is there and tells Harry, while reading a magazine called Security World, that Harry is considered a notable person who will be attending a surveillance and security convention. Stan says another person will be at the convention who was involved in industrial espionage, learning and tipping off others about changes in car designs. This activity is unethical and probably illegal, but in the reverse morality world of these invaders of secrets, the infraction is admired. Meanwhile, Harry coordinates the various tapes in order to merge the pieces of the recorded conversation, and he looks through pictures taken of the young couple, trying to assemble a coherent picture, which he fails to do as we find out later.

We next see Harry in a phone booth. He is calling The Director, the man who hired him, to arrange the delivery of his tapes and photographs. Harry tells the person on the other end that he can’t be called back later because he doesn’t trust home phones since they can be tapped. However, Harry is told he can’t talk to The Director, and the person speaking to Harry can’t even assure him that he will be paid in full for his services. He does set up an appointment for Harry. This exchange is impersonal and cryptic. So, there is the implication that conversations can take place, but truth may not be revealed from them.

Harry visits his “girlfriend,” Amy (Teri Garr), who wasn’t sure he was coming. Again, there is a suggestion of a lack of communication. She finds out from him that it’s his birthday. She asks if something special can happen between them on this occasion. He says “like what,” because for him there can’t be anything “special” or significant in a relationship. He is cautious when it comes to revealing too much about himself, which might expose him and make him vulnerable. He says he doesn't have any secrets, but that’s all he does have, which are usually about others. His work reveals the private lives of people, which can make them susceptible to harm. She says she’s one of his secrets, since nobody is even supposed to know about their relationship. She says she sees him spying on her from the staircase, as if he can’t trust anybody, maybe observing what she is doing when he isn’t supposed to be there. Thus, he even carries his profession of eavesdropping into his private life. The two parts of his world are so interconnected, he has become his job. He’s a professional voyeur. She says it’s as if he is trying to catch her at something. She says it amusingly, but she is revealing him to himself. He even listens to her phone conversations. Amy starts singing, “When the Red Red Robin comes bob, bob bobbin’ along,” which is what Ann was singing, and which symbolizes that Harry’s work is overflowing into his private life, since he was paid to spy on a woman, but he also spies on his girlfriend. (The song contains the line, “Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead,” which perhaps implies that Harry maybe has to “wake up” to the harm that he is doing).

Harry kisses Amy, but still holds onto his eyeglasses, and keeps his coat on, hanging onto his detached facade, showing how he can’t be emotionally connected to her. She asks about his work, since he hasn’t told her what he does for a living. She doesn’t even know about his living arrangements, and she keeps wanting to know more about him. He tells her he doesn’t like answering questions. He pays her rent, so he basically treats her like a prostitute, instead of a girlfriend. She says she was thrilled to have him show up, but says she doesn’t want “to wait for you anymore.” On his way home, he keeps thinking about the couple he observed earlier, still thinking about his work, but maybe envious of the intimacy they displayed at their meeting.

The next day Harry goes to deliver his surveillance materials to The Director, but he isn’t at his office. Instead, an assistant, Martin Stett (Harrison Ford) says he will take the package, and gives Harry the payment for his services. Harry doesn’t like his work being handed to a subordinate because he probably is not sure if it will get to the man who hired him. He most likely doesn’t want to hurt his reputation for confidentiality, which he tries to maintain, although his job shows how difficult that is to do. He gives back the money, and wrestles the package away from Stett, who tells Harry he shouldn’t get involved in what’s going on. Stett says the tapes are dangerous and “Someone may get hurt.” Harry leaves, heads to the elevator, and Mark, the man he spied on, is there. Harry now knows he was hired to conduct surveillance on someone associated with The Director’s office. He then sees Ann there, too.

Harry goes back to his workshop and again listens to the tapes. He listens to Mark and Ann setting up a date and time for something to take place at a hotel. He doesn’t like Stan asking questions about the couple’s conversation. He tells Stan he doesn’t want to be made to explain the personal problems of his clients, again wanting to maintain his distance from the subjects he is recording. Harry also shows his dislike of Stan taking the Lord’s name in vain. In his defense, Stan says it’s just normal human curiosity to ask questions. An agitated Harry says in his business he doesn’t know anything about human nature or curiosity. He would rather be clinical in his actions, and people become abstract subjects to record in his job. Otherwise, it would most likely be too emotionally precarious for him if he cared about who he observes. In the recording, Ann’s suspicions about being recorded make her ask Mark to pretend to laugh to throw off whoever might be observing. So, we know they are planning something that others may be worried about. Harry adjusts the recording and hears Mark say, “He’d kill us if he got the chance.” Thus, we know that the two are involved in something dangerous, and just from what Harry could make out, he believes that Ann and Mark are in a precarious situation.

Harry kneels in a church, and goes to confession. We now know he is a Catholic. That fact explains his distaste for Stan’s swearing. It also shows that Harry has some moral values that he has clung to as an adult. His religious beliefs are in conflict with the subversive activities inherent in his job. Underneath his uncaring surface exists a conscious that is at odds with what harm his professional duties may incur. He confesses to the priest that his work may cause the young couple to get hurt, and he admits that his job has brought harm to someone before.

At the security conference Harry observes new surveillance devices hidden in clocks, under car dashboards, and in phones. It’s a public expo, and it comes off as legitimate, as if new automobiles were on display. The lack of any concern for what is being promoted here makes it seem acceptable to invade the privacy of others. Harry is so secretive and mistrusting that he won’t allow himself to be exposed promoting the technology of others, and he says he builds his own equipment so he can insulate himself, basically keeping him cut off from the world at large. At the convention he sees Stett, appropriately on one of the cameras on display, suggesting that Harry can only participate in the world in an indirect, passive fashion. Merchants express their worry about others stealing from them, so they, ironically, are victims of their own industry. Harry sees Stan there, too. He got a job with another company because Harry keeps him in the dark about their clients. Because Stett is there, and only after Harry believes he may be in danger, does he reach out to Stan, saying that he is being followed and convinces Stan to help Harry. Harry calls Amy, but the number has been disconnected and he can’t get her new number. He is worried about being alone now that he feels threatened, but he didn’t treat Amy in a caring way, so it is too late to obtain comfort from her. Harry confronts Stett who tells him to meet on Sunday at one pm, and The Director will be there to accept the tapes. Harry, suspicious that he has become involved in a dangerous plot, says he’ll think about it.

Harry leaves the expo with other people he knows who are in the surveillance business. Young guys in a Mustang speed by their car and cut them off. Harry’s driver knows how to get info based on the other car’s license plate. He stops the car next to the youths and tells the young driver his name, address, height and weight, just to intimidate him. This scene shows how quickly one can discover personal information about someone. They go to Harry’s shop to have some drinks. Stan finds out from Bernie Moran (Allen Garfield), who says Harry is the best bugger on the West Coast, and he is the best in the east, that the secretive Harry came from New York. Bernie says he bugged his first phone when he was twelve, and boasts that his father thought that his son was very intelligent to accomplish this feat. But, Bernie’s pride derives from unscrupulous activity. Meredith (Elizabeth MacRae), who helped with Bernie’s demonstration at the convention, asks if Harry lives close by, but he doesn’t answer, unwilling to disclose personal information. She talks about herself, but he won’t divulge anything concerning his life. She says she wishes he could talk to her, that they could be friends. He starts to talk about his relationship with Amy, but in a cloaked way. Harry asks Meredith if she were involved with someone who she didn’t know when he would show up, didn’t know anything about him, but might love her, would she stick by him? She asks how would she know if he loved her? He concedes that she wouldn’t, so he basically gets his answer, that it’s unfair to ask someone to stick with a person one knows virtually nothing about.

Bernie says he bugged a presidential candidate who then lost. He takes credit for it, like he earned an infamous merit badge. Bernie seems to be in competition with Harry, trying to one-up him, and wants to get information on his work techniques. When Stan says Harry was able to bug a parakeet, Bernie feels threatened, and makes an excuse for not doing something so difficult by saying that parakeets aren’t his thing. Bernie wants to know how Harry bugged the Teamsters concerning a phony welfare fund, and says Harry was working for the Attorney General at the time. So, the dirty work is sanctioned by a supposedly legitimate person of authority in the government. Harry is surprised Bernie knows who he was working for, so Bernie is bragging about his inside information. These guys even spy on each other, which implies that nobody is safe from scrutiny. Bernie says that only the president of the Teamsters and their accountant knew about the fund, and the boat they were on when they met to discuss their arrangement was bug-proof. Yet, Harry somehow recorded the information. The president of the union thought the accountant betrayed him. The accountant’s family was later found bound, and their heads were cut off. Bernie is indicting Harry for the deaths of three people. Bernie probably isn’t really concerned about how they should take responsibility for their actions. He most likely just wants to discredit Harry based on what happened in this case. But this job is the one Harry told the priest about in confession, so secretly he is feeling torn up about the consequences of his work. Outwardly he says what happened to the victims was not his fault and whatever people do with the tapes is their business. Stan starts to play the tapes of the latest assignment, and Harry shouts to turn them off. Bernie, wanting a challenge to show he is as good as Harry, says he can figure out whatever Harry does to work a case. Stan tells him about the problems involved in bugging the couple, but Bernie can’t work out how to carry out the job successfully. Harry now proudly boasts how he did it, and says it was beautiful. One of the women there asks what did the couple do that put them in danger, but Harry says he doesn’t know, showing how in his profession the people are immaterial. He wants to believe that it’s just the mechanics of getting the information that is important, not the lives affected by the surveillance. Bernie says they should become partners, but wants to look at Harry’s devices, so he probably just wants to steal his versions of the equipment. He says he’s number two, so he has to try harder, and shows how he bugged Harry by placing a pen with a microphone in his jacket pocket. Bernie plays the conversation between Meredith and Harry, which shows how even the buggers, who champion the eavesdropping technology, can become victims, too. Harry was being confessional to the girl, and now feels his shields of privacy have been penetrated. Harry is angry, kicks Bernie out, and breaks the expensive pen, even though Bernie said he would give it to him. Everyone leaves, but Meredith says she’ll stay. Harry starts to play his tape of the couple. He says Ann sounds frightened. About her voice he says, “It makes me feel … something.” He is admitting that he is emotionally compromised, but Meredith says he doesn’t have to feel anything, he just has to do his job, which is what he has been openly, at least, telling himself. Meredith kisses him and leads him to a cot to make love, but Harry is engrossed in the recording. He says after hearing how the couple can get killed that he must destroy the tapes because he “can’t let it happen again,” referring to what Bernie said about the deaths of the three people.

Harry has a nightmare where in a fog, symbolic of how muddled morality has become for him, he tries to warn Ann. He can’t seem to reveal stuff about himself except in his dreams, but it shows how he wants to share, to connect with someone. He says he was paralyzed in his left arm and leg as a child. His mother put holy oil on him to bring about spiritual healing. He says felt disappointed he survived slipping into the therapeutic bath water that he was left in when his mother answered the doorbell. These stories show Harry’s religious background and its ability to instill feelings of guilt. This feeling of responsibility for bad outcomes is reflected in his story about hitting a friend of his father in the stomach at the age of five. The man died a year later, and the dreaming Harry seems to be making it sound like a cause and effect situation. He repeats the words from the tape, “He’d kill us if he got the chance,” trying  to warn her, so as to relieve him of his guilt, at least in his dreams. When he wakes, Meredith is gone, and so are the tapes. So, his work in a underhanded field brings about some payback, as Meredith turned the tables on Harry, appearing to be something other than what she seemed, and making him a victim.

Harry makes a call to Stett. He can’t get in touch with him. Later, he gets a call from Stett, who admits that the tapes are in his possession. Stett says they couldn’t take the chance that Harry might destroy them. Harry is alarmed because Stett has his phone number. He thought he was safe and secure, but he wasn’t. Stett says they prepare a dossier on everybody they do business with, and admits they have been following Harry, which adds a sinister tone to their talk. Stett says that Harry can deliver his photographs, and The Director will pay him in full.

Harry goes to the office building of The Director with the photos. He hears his recording of the couple playing behind a door marked “Private,” which is ironic, since the sound carries beyond the room, and this film argues that hardly anything is private anymore. Stett is there with The Director (Robert Duvall). There is a Doberman Pinscher, present, too, which adds to the scare factor. The Director says angrily to Stett, “You’d want it to be true!” But, Stett says he just wants him to be informed. The Director tells Harry his money is on the table, which Harry counts. On the desk, Harry sees a picture of the Director with Ann. The Director tells Harry to count the money outside, wanting to get rid of him. Harry leaves the photographs, but asks, “What will you do to her?” He doesn’t get an answer, showing how despite his desire to reveal things, he has trouble getting at the truth. As he leaves, Stett reminds Harry of his payment, as if to say he was compensated well for his work, so he should be quiet about it. Harry asks what will The Director do to Ann and Mark, and Stett says, “We’ll see,” which sounds ominous.

Harry knows the day, time, and place the couple talked about meeting. He checks into the hotel room next to the one mentioned on the tape. He looks for the best spot to place his surveillance material, which is under the bathroom sink. He makes a whole in the tile to insert a microphone. He can hear The Director in the adjacent room shouting. Harry is upset as he jumps out from under the sink. He goes on the balcony and can see someone being attacked through the jalousie glass. Harry recoils in horror and writhes on the bed. He puts on the TV so as not to hear, just the opposite of what he does for his profession. The television is tuned to a story about the Watergate scandal, which involved an attempt at bugging, and which adds to the theme of how pervasive surveillance at all levels had become even back then. Later, when things quiet down, Harry goes next door and picks the lock. The place has been cleaned, ready for the next guest, as if nothing happened there. The toilet has a sanitary strip on it, but it sounds like the water is running. Harry flushes it, but it is clogged and it backs up, spilling blood from soaked towels onto the floor.

Harry goes to see The Director, but he is told he has to leave. He struggles and is manhandled by two security men. As he exits the building he sees a car parked outside with curtains on the side for, yes, privacy, but Harry can see it is Ann sitting in the vehicle, so his assumption that she was harmed was false. She glances at him. We then have a scene where Ann is interrogated by the press asking about if she thinks there was any “foul play” associated with the “accident,” and will she now have “corporate control” of her company? She sees Harry and recognizes him. From the reporter’s question, we learn that The Director was her husband. However, we know that Ann on the tape said she loved Mark. A reporter asks if her husband had a history of driving drunk. Harry, as do we, realize that Ann and Mark were the perpetrators of the crime, not The Director (a name that becomes ironic since he is the one who was manipulated), and that perception of the truth as we, and Harry, observed it was false. So Harry’s surveillance does not always provide an accurate picture of reality. Ann and Mark wanted The Director to suspect his wife’s infidelity, hire someone to spy on them, and in the tape provide the location to lure him and kill him. They not only remove the impediment to their being together, but also bestow corporate control to Ann. Harry envisions how the person being attacked in the next hotel room was really The Director, and how the couple made his death look like a car accident. So, appearances can be deceptive as to who is innocent and who is guilty. The phrase “He’d kill us if he got the chance” makes it sound now like a rationalization to initiate a preemptive strike.

Back at his apartment, Harry receives a call, on his supposedly restricted line, but the other party hangs up when he answers. The phone rings again, and we hear a tape rewinding which then plays a recorded message from Stett, (we are now in a world bereft of human communication) who obviously was involved in the plot. The message tells Harry that they know he knows, and warns him not to pursue things further, because they will be “listening to you.” Now he is the target of surveillance. He starts to check his place for bugs. He is not safe in his own sanctuary. He pulls apart outlets, air vents, lights, and his phone. He checks his statute of the Mother Mary, which he breaks apart, symbolically showing his faith in even his own religion to protect him has been destroyed. He starts to become unhinged as he rips apart his walls and floors. His place is in shambles as he plays his saxophone, his music being all that he has left. But, he didn’t check the saxophone. Can he ever be safe and secure in his own privacy? Can we?

The next film is Colossus: The Forbin Project.