But “The Conversation” is not a revision or remake of “Blow Up.” It follows one of the favorite themes of director/writer/producer Francis Ford Coppola: the separation of private morality from the public sphere. The fascination of Coppola’s “Godfather” trilogy revolves around how the men of the Corleone family can be such great and admirable husbands and fathers while being such loathsome human beings. How do they do it? How does Michael famously “reject Satan and all his empty promises” while simultaneously having his enemies killed? It’s work, that’s how, and work doesn’t come home. A peculiarly modern dilemma, to be sure, considering that so much of who we are is identified by what job we have.
It is from this neurosis that the central character of “The Conversation” is built. He is an intensely private man who eavesdrops on others. He hears what they say but doesn’t want to listen. He goes to church but refuses to translate that morality into action. He wishes he could ignore his conscience, but he can’t. In many ways he prefigures the “reality TV” blitz of recent years, in which we can’t get enough of eavesdropping on others, judging them, and then taking comfort in how there’s nothing we can do about them. He is the everyman of the industrialized, technologized world, locked away from everyone else, yet flooding himself with information about them.
His name is Harry Caul and Gene Hackman plays him in a contained and understated performance. He knows people in his field, but has no friends. He has a kept woman, sort of a prostitute, but refuses to answer any of her questions. He doesn’t want his landlady to have his keys. Reality is questioned in “The Conversation,” like in “Blow Up,” but this is the more psychological film. It knows the terrors of the imagination and conscience are infinitely more scary than whatever we find in the real world. It is a thriller that takes place almost entirely within the mind, with only suggestions taken from the physical world.
But no thriller is completely mind-bound, after all, and most of “The Conversation’s” chills come from how sterile and detached Coppola is, as if Harry is being followed everywhere he goes, as he meets his girl, as he goes to a surveillance convention, as he plays his saxophone and mulls over his dilemma. The men who hired him meet him in pristine white offices and speak elliptically. They are represented by a young Harrison Ford, who condescends to him the way you or I might condescend to a check-out girl. If Harry’s conscience is a burden to him, it is only an irritant to Ford’s character.
As befits a film of the ‘70s, Coppola gives the film an unhurried quality. Nothing is revved up, nothing is amplified. When we watch Harry busy himself at his sound equipment, we are expected to sit patiently and watch the man at his work. He is good at his work and loves to do it; part of “The Conversation’s” own dilemma is that how can defining ourselves by our work be so bad if work can bring us such pleasure? There is calm joy and contentment in doing things with our hands and doing them well. David Hemmings feels that same unsmiling, unthinking satisfaction as he blows up photos again and again in “Blow Up” and John Travolta feels it in “Blow Out” as he combines still photographs with his recording. And of course Harry feels it as he combines three separate recordings of the young couple into a single tape, even if his conscience is gnawing at him. The activity is its own reward, not the goal.
While recording night noises on a deserted bridge, a movie sound man (John Travolta) catches the sound of a tire bursting and sees a car flying off a bridge. Was it an accidental blow out, or did he record the sound of a gunshot as well? When “Blow Out” was first released, Pauline Kael wrote this about it: “It’s as if De Palma had finally understood what technique is for; this is the first film he has made about the things that really matter to him.” What really matters to him? Movies: their power, what they can capture, what they can misrepresent, what they can mean, how that meaning can change, and a million other things.
“Blow Out” is the love child of Antonioni’s “Blow Up” and Coppola’s “The Conversation,” raised on Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” and worthy of its lineage. Only De Palma can cross-reference, copy, and allude so constantly and make it look like art, and not like parody. Instead of being derivative, he has a point to make all his own, and at the same time his use of “excerpts” from the works of other filmmakers serves to enlighten us concerning his pictures and theirs. Like “Blow Up,” the movie asks, can we ever know the truth of a particular event? Even if we’re certain what happened, is it still true if no one corroborates us? Does context change the truth?
Complicating everything is a sleazy photographer (Dennis Franz) whose pictures can go with Travolta’s sounds, in a lovely metaphor for how it takes more than one point-of-view to know the truth of any given instant in time. Within a single scene, Franz’s photographer is actually able to use the exact same evidence to implicate AND exonerate himself. Cops and assassins never say “pretend” it didn’t happen, but simply “it did not happen.” A politician says to a rogue underling “I don’t know you” and “we’ve never met,” not “I won’t acknowledge you.”
Like Hitchcock, there are lookalike women, stabbings, and meticulous camera work, but De Palma’s long takes, smooth tracking shots, and indulgence in split screens and composite shots might make him even more meticulous than the Master. At least once per movie, De Palma will have a silent interlude, a soundless, slow-motion sequence, in which communication is made possible only through glances, camera movements, and Pino Dinaggio’s over-the-top score. Another of De Palma’s favorite themes is the revisiting of an earlier scene with new knowledge: we go through the episode on the bridge at least three times, and each time we enter and leave it wiser.
Like Hitchcock, “Blow Out” follows an innocent man wrongfully under suspicion. The fact that he exclaims “Jesus!” no less than three times in the film is proof of his innocence. Like so much Hitchcock, Our Hero may be innocent of the current crime, but no one is clean. The hero is partly responsible for the flashback death of a good cop, not unlike Jimmy Stewart in “Vertigo.” Because he works as a sound man for tit-oriented low-budget slasher movies, he might qualify as a pervert, although certainly not on the level of a peeping toms of “Rear Window” and “Psycho.”
Page three of "What the hell happened?" Back to home.