Silver, Alain, James Ursini and Paul Duncan, ed. Film Noir. Hohenzollerning: Taschen, 2004.

The Conversation is considered to continue in the tradition of Film Noir detective stories as part of the neo-noir movement started by Chinatown (1974). With its roots in the dark scenery apparent in German Expressionism, Film Noir caught on in the United States in the 60’s with young enthusiasts promoting the movement in film schools. As it happens, Coppola was a student at UCLA during that time, and he this is when he wrote the film. The Conversation includes many tenets of the film noir genre such as the typical haunted past of the protagonist. The protagonist’s actions are often influenced by this past, and because of it, he likes to live in the shadows and avoid human contact. The emphasis on causality is also apparent in the movie; Harry struggles with the consequences of his actions, and his fears often evolve into imagined fatalism concerning the subjects of his surveillance. Harry Caul is hunted by Martin and “the Director”; typical of a film noir protagonist, he is never able to escape from this, as evidenced by the movie’s final scene. Even if Harry does escape the surveillance of the corporation, his mind will not let him be free of fear for his privacy, which he so highly regards. As in most film noirs, the most seditious character in the film is a woman, referred to in the genre as a femme fatale. These women are willing to use any weapon, mostly their sexuality, in order to gain something from the male dominated universe. While Harry seems to brush off and disrespect women, he is eventually outsmarted by one because he believed that she actually seeked a connection. This character’s destiny is foreshadowed for studiers of noir when she states that she is unsure if she is married, implying that this is a strong woman who is not subservient.  The Conversation also uses a variety of technical techniques that resemble the noir style in their use of odd angles and moving cameras.   

Turner, Dennis. “The Subject of ‘The Conversation’.” Cinema Journal 24.4 (1985): 4-22.
JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Philadelphia, PA. 4 Apr 2006
< http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-7101%28198522%2924%3A4%3C4%3ATSO%22C%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R>
 

The Conversation follows the tradition of French Impressionism by presenting a mystery that cannot be resolved by the viewer or the character. The film blends this mystery with more contemporary Film Noir style that defies the viewer’s subjectivity. The protagonist Harry is in every scene, providing the audience no more information than he has over the six days. The ending scene provides no resolve but, Harry Caul’s paranoia seems to have transferred onto the viewer; although there is no evidence of the apartment is being bugged besides Martin’s word, the viewer perceives Harry’s fear and leaves with the impression that the apartment was still being watched (although these intuitions could be due to the interesting surveillance-like camera work). Turner argues that the film establishes untraditional relationships between images and sounds that are more demanding to the viewer thus paralleling the cloudiness of the storyline. Although this may diminish the movie watching experience, the viewer’s experience watching the film is similar to the actual experience of Hackman’s character. Harry Caul is forced to watch from afar and to interpret without context, as is The Conversation’s viewer. Interestingly, the plot lies on the fact that Harry did misinterpret information that led him to be fearful and paranoid for the wrong reasons. Harry is a viewer just like those in the theatre seats; even though he thinks that a crime is about to occur, he just watches, listens, and hopes that his attendance will be enough. Harry’s inability to act is the film’s antagonist, thus, the moral conveyed to the audience is meant to be liberating and encouraging. The film seeks to show that action is necessary to solve situations that violate civil liberties. Some argue that the whole of the movie is indecipherable because Harry’s paranoia is so great that the realizations of surveillance could be fantasy. Coppola does succeed in relating to the audience by harkening back to films from the past such as Hitchcock’s Psycho and Antonioni’s Blow-Up in order to give cues to understand the movie.

Beck, Jay. “Citing the Sound.” Journal of Popular Film and Television Winter 2002.
    http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0412/is_4_29/ai_82779441/pg_4

The sound in The Conversation was nominated for Best Sound at the 1975 Academy Awards. While most of the sound production in the 1960s was remnant of the studio systems original sound technology, this film pushed sound production into a new era by exploring new ways to integrate sound into film. Since the central character’s job is to manipulate film, sound plays an important role. The soundtrack is a driving factor of the plot in its case, and it required the viewers to integrate their viewing experience with their listening experience. Films in the 1970s embraced “anti-realistic” tactics such as grainy film stock and lens flares, and this trend continued into sound in Coppola’s film. He used the sound to drive the narrative, which was a relatively new concept, only preceded by Antonioni’s film Blow Up. Influential sound producers defied the typical Hollywood hierarchy by running the production team democratically and allowing free experimentation in sound techniques. The problem with the technique of driving the movie with sound was that audiences were not used to integrating sound into a visual field. Harry not only provides a narrative for his films through the recorded conversation, he basically mixes the soundtrack throughout the film, acting as a sound mixer. A powerful aspect of the sound production is the “audio-zoom”, where the sound increases as the camera zooms into a crowd. The sound echoes what an eavesdropper would hear, it picks up on important conversations throughout the crowd. The sound relays Harry’s mental state to the viewer, and is heard from his perspective. The sound is not a redundancy of the actions on the screen; it is a complement to the action. The deconstruction of sound production in the 1970s was a result of the rebellion of directors to the studio system, but soon Dolby would standardize sound and mixing techniques and end the period of experimentation. 

Strong, Benjamin. “Old-School Paranoia.” Slate. 9 Mar. 2006 http://www.slate.com/id/2137770/

 Benjamin Strong’s article concerns the legacy of The Conversation and how this film influenced the whole genre of conspiracy films. He focuses on the influence of Antonioni’s movie Blow-Up (1966) on Coppola’s film, and subsequently, the movies that were influenced by The Conversation. While Coppola had wanted to make the movie before Nixon was even President, the release coincided with the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena of the 42 tapes that would force President Richard Nixon to resign. Strong suggests that Harry Caul is meant to be a placeholder for Nixon, because their fear of paranoia certainly links the two.  Harry is unable to escape surveillance even though he is dubbed the “best bugger on the West Coast” as witnessed in the final scene where he rips apart his apartment but still fails to find the means that allow him to be watched. While this film was the only one to address wiretap surveillance from a cathartic perspective, many conspiracy films followed suit in the same existential tone as The Conversation. Harry Caul’s character was based on Antonioni’s jaded photographer in Blow-Up. In the film, the cynical character’s feelings are awakened when he accidentally records evidence to a murder; this character gets wrapped up in the crime just like Harry but, The Conversation gives in to a more optimistic point of view by implying that the truth will liberate the injustices. The movie also influenced a similarly named movie, Blow Out, which was the first movie to tackle wiretap conspiracies since Coppola. This film provided a more bleak view of the future that emphasizes the government’s denial to tell the truth when confronted with the ethical issues of invading privacy.