The Conversation (1974 USA 113mins)
Analysis by Brenda Austin-Smith, film and literature instructor at the University of Manitoba, Canada
"I don't have anything personal," says Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), protagonist of The Conversation to his landlady, ".nothing of value, except my keys." The comment, made over the telephone rather than face-to-face, confirms Harry Caul as a character pathologically obsessed with his own privacy, even as he spends his days as a wiretapping expert invading the sonic privacy of others. The immediate cultural context of The Conversation was Watergate, the release of the Nixon tapes, and growing social anxiety over surveillance. The film's release in the wake of the most significant U.S. political scandal of the late 20th century touched a nerve with viewers and critics, who read this densely plotted tale of corporate intrigue, murder, and paranoia as a dissertation on American society in the mid-'70s. Nominated for three Academy Awards, The Conversation lost out to another Coppola film, The Godfather II, though it won the Golden Palm at Cannes.
The Conversation has been described as an "Orwellian morality play" in which the spy becomes the spied upon, and technology is used against the user.
Despite its structural flaws, its derivative techniques, and its rather hackneyed conspiracy theme, The Conversation transcends these limitations in its provision of a character study of haunting, if disturbing, power. Harry Caul, a character Coppola himself feared would be impossible for viewers to sympathize with, is the film's central figure, a man so obsessed with making himself unavailable to others that he has almost completely eradicated his own personality. His last name spelled out carefully over the phone, links Harry to those born with a caul, and indeed, the film is replete with images of Harry wearing an old raincoat, behind plastic curtains, and obscured by a telephone booth.
Harry is a surveillance genius for whom other people's privacy is an obstacle to be overcome using equipment he builds himself. He is also a man suffering intensely from guilt: one of his previous assignments resulted in the death of an entire family. This revelation, as well as the film's depiction of Harry's Catholicism (we see him at confession, an analogue of the secular eavesdropping Harry practices), complicates his detachment from others by introducing the one element that functions as the "bug" Harry can neither disable nor escape: his own conscience."
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/13/conversation.html
Other more recent films with privacy themes include:
Gattaca
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
Brazil
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
with it's odd prescient "Information Retrieval" managers.
The Matrix series
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/
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