Complete credited cast: | |||
Gene Hackman | ... | Harry Caul | |
John Cazale | ... | Stan | |
Allen Garfield | ... | Bernie Moran | |
Frederic Forrest | ... | Mark | |
Cindy Williams | ... | Ann | |
Michael Higgins | ... | Paul | |
Elizabeth MacRae | ... | Meredith (as Elizabeth Mac Rae) | |
Teri Garr | ... | Amy | |
Harrison Ford | ... | Martin Stett | |
Mark Wheeler | ... | Receptionist | |
Robert Shields | ... | The Mime | |
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Phoebe Alexander | ... | Lurleen |
Harry Caul is a devout Catholic and a lover of jazz music who plays his saxophone while listening to his jazz records. He is a San Francisco-based electronic surveillance expert who owns and operates his own small surveillance business. He is renowned within the profession as being the best, one who designs and constructs his own surveillance equipment. He is an intensely private and solitary man in both his personal and professional life, which especially irks Stan, his business associate who often feels shut out of what is happening with their work. This privacy, which includes not letting anyone into his apartment and always telephoning his clients from pay phones is, in part, intended to control what happens around him. His and Stan's latest job (a difficult one) is to record the private discussion of a young couple meeting in crowded and noisy Union Square. The arrangement with his client, known only to him as "the director", is to provide the audio recording of the discussion ... Written by Huggo
The Conversation is a stark look into the modern art of surveillance and its affect on one of its practitioners. Harry Caul (Hackman) is at the top of his business, but he's disturbed. Highly paranoiac, he is troubled by bad things that happened to some innocent people as a result of a prior surveillance job. Now he's afraid it's happening again....
The Conversation could not be more antithetical of the current movie making style. Stark, claustrophobic, unsexy, slow-paced, and with almost no soundtrack, it slowly builds to its dramatic noirish denouement.
A real treat, and as an added attraction the actors include a young Cindy Williams, Terri Garr, John Cazale, and Harrison Ford. Worth the rental unless anything outside of the MTV mould causes agitation.