(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation gets overshadowed by the director’s operatic Godfather saga and the mad scope of Apocalypse Now, but his comparatively modest 1974 suspense film certainly deserves a look.
Chicago’s Music Box Theatre may be the place to do this. The art house cinema this week begins showing a new, 35mm print of Coppola’s slow-burner, which is anchored by a harrowing Gene Hackman performance.
He’s cast against type as nebbishy bugging expert Harry Caul, who orchestrates the recording of a couple in San Francisco’s Union Square. Caul’s skills previously caused the deaths of innocent people, but he washes his hands of any consequences. He's doing his job, nothing more. And yet he becomes increasingly worried that the targets of his latest eavesdropping will come to harm because of cryptic comments the microphones have picked up.
The Conversation holds it own against Watergate-era thrillers like The Parallax View and All the President’s Men, where imperfect protagonists get in over their heads while wading into conspiracies. Like Parallax, The Conversation concludes with a stunning twist.
To boot, Coppola’s film, which took top honors at Cannes, features the great John Cazale (Fredo from Godfather I and II) and strong supporting turns by future stars Cindy Williams ("Laverne & Shirley") and Harrison Ford.
Related
