In Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Conversation', Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul - a surveillance expert who becomes highly paranoid about his own work. As he learns about a potential murder his work might lead to, he starts questioning his morals and struggles with the implications of his profession.
Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who has just been surveilled, sits in his ruined apartment playing the saxophone surrounded by the splinters of the walls he tore apart looking for a bug he never found. Coppola ends in fixed-frame silence: the most paranoid shot in American cinema.
Coppola films Gene Hackman's surveillance technician hearing what he should not. The apartment-tearing climax is the post-Watergate paranoia diagnosed.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, it is a powerful yet underappreciated thriller that explores themes of privacy and surveillance.
