Overlooked and underrated: Coppola’s ‘The Conversation’

THE CONVERSATION (1974)

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

Between filming “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II,” writer-director Francis Ford Coppola shot a small, fascinating drama – and one of the great paranoid thrillers that filled screens in the mid-1970s.

Gene Hackman stars in “The Conversation” as Harry Caul, a professional surveillance expert hired to eavesdrop on a conversation between two adults in San Francisco. While filtering through the tapes, Caul begins to suspect someone is in danger.

Coppola wrote, directed and produced this efficient, low-budget film – the second movie of the greatest four-film stretch in motion picture history.”The Godfather” in 1972, “The Conversation” in 1974, “The Godfather Part II” in 1974 and “Apocalypse Now” in 1978.

I guarantee you: No American film director can match the quality, depth and lasting power of each of those films. “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” rank as the top two films ever made, closely followed by the other two.

Overlooked and underrated: Brian DePalma’s ‘Blow Out’

Editor’s Note: This is the first of three posts on films of Brian DePalma. 

By TERRY R.CASSREINO

BLOW OUT (1981

Brian DePalma built his reputation and successful career by directing, and sometimes also writing, suspenseful and memorable character-driven horror thrillers.

He modeled his early work on Alfred Hitchcock. Some critics derided DePalma as nothing more than a Hitchcock hack, directing films that echoed and mimicked the themes and settings of many Hitchcock classics.

“Obsession” (1976), set in New Orleans, was nothing more than a retread of “Vertigo” – replete with a haunting score by Hitchcock regular Bernard Hermann. “Sisters” (1973) and, especially, “Dressed to Kill” (1980) had an awful lot in common with “Psycho.” In fact, “Dressed to Kill” is practically a shot-for-shot remake.

When DePalma tried to re-invent himself, his efforts proved just as troubling. “The Untouchables” (1987) was a slick, uninteresting retread of a popular 1950s television crime drama and “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1990) was a flat-out, unmitigated, uninteresting disaster.