The film by Francis Ford Coppola titled, The Conversation, was a film produced in 1974 starring Gene Hackman and Harrison Ford. This film follows Harry Caul, played by Gene Hackman, who is hired to bug a conversation between two young individuals at the beginning of the film. Harry is called the “best bugger on the west coast,” and the reputation definitely follows him. He starts to worry about the young couple that he spied on, hoping that the conversation he recorded isn’t used as a reason to kill them. His devout Catholic tendencies is a major plot point, and early on in the film he makes a confession saying that he doesn’t want the young couple to get murdered. It has happened to him before, and although he says it is just a job, he is clearly conflicted by his line of work.

Coppola made this film during the height of the Watergate scandal. In 1972 Nixon was caught covering up wire-tapping and other sorts of spying on U.S. politicians. By 1974 the public was panicking that this new and improved wire-tapping technology was on track to limit their freedom. Coppola used a dark mood to invoke conspiracy theory themes throughout The Conversation and made the film reek of the Watergate scandal. According to Roger Ebert’s 1974 review, the main difference between this movie and the real-world scandal is that supposedly the Watergate crew had no inclination that they were in the wrong, but Harry Caul could feel that he wasn’t doing something right, and it broke him (Ebert). This film was used to frighten the public about the dangers of this sort of technology and how it can be used by private corporations.  The audience took this film as a warning back when it came out, but even audiences today react to the film in the same way.  According to the 2014 article, Why the Conversation Should be Required Viewing at the NSA, by Alexander Huls, the movie is interpreted as a warning to how easy it can be to treat humans as faceless people while using this spying technology (Huls). The Conversation is a conspiracy thriller that can be compared to older thrillers such as Three Days of Condor, and newer action movies such as Live Free or Die Hard.  The theme of this film has trickled down throughout the years and can be seen in many other films that warn the audience about the power of the government or spy technology. Many argue that the 1998 film, Enemy of the State, which is also co-starring Gene Hackman is strongly influenced by The Conversation, and could even potentially looked at as a continuation of the Harry Caul story.

The budget of The Conversation is very low, $1.6 million, especially compared to the budget of The Godfather, $6 million, which is the movie that Coppola released the year before. The Conversation grossed over $4.4 million domestically, so it definitely made an impactful presence on the audience it was intended for. It is a conventional film intended for popularity from the masses. It was nominated for three different Academy Awards, and actually lost out on best picture to the other Coppola film, The Godfather Part II. Although this film is conventional, the style is more on the experimental side, and since it was received so well, that is why the film has influenced many others of the genre.

The films also explores the phycological uncertainties of Harry Caul. The entire film Caul is filled with paranoia and what most likely is obsessive compulsive disorder (Ryan). He is obsessed with his privacy and gets physically upset anytime his privacy is compromised. During the scene that he lets his peers into his workspace to have a little party, his competitor records Caul’s conversation as a joke to try to convince him to team up. Caul gets aggravated and kicks everybody out except for a woman. Caul’s fears turn out to be rationalized when he wakes up and realizes that in the middle of the night the woman has stolen the tapes that he has been concerned about. The film ends with Caul obsessively tearing apart his apartment trying to find a bug that he thinks was planted by the director’s assistant to try to keep Caul quiet about what he has seen. Caul never finds the bug even though he destroys everything in his apartment, including an emotional sequence where he reluctantly breaks open his Virgin Mary statue which symbolizes that his obsessive need for privacy outweighs his eternal need for religion.  The only thing that is left after Caul breaks apart his apartment is his saxophone, which leaves the audience to wonder: is the bug in the saxophone, or was the call from the assistant all in Caul’s head and the bug was just a delusion?