Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Conversation' (1974)

In this episode, I talk about Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film, "The Conversation." The film follows Harry Caul, a wiretapper in San Francisco who becomes obsessed with a recording he’s made of a young couple in a crowded park. As Harry pieces together fragments of their conversation, he’s drawn into a spiral of paranoia, guilt, and loneliness.

I explore what makes "The Conversation" a masterpiece—not just as a film about surveillance and paranoia, but as an intimate character study. I talk about Harry’s profound loneliness, his complicity in his own alienation, and the psychic toll of a life spent surveilling others from a distance. 

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My Sources:

• Interview between Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola
• 'The Conversation:' Francis Ford Coppola's Paranoia-Ridden Tale of Surveillance, Guilt, and Isolation