The Conversation
The Conversation is a 1974 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, and Robert Duvall. Hackman portrays a surveillance expert who faces a moral dilemma when his recordings reveal a potential murder.
Plot
Harry Caul, a surveillance expert in San Francisco, specializes in wiretapping services. He and his team are hired by a client, who identifies himself as "the Director", to eavesdrop on a couple walking through Union Square. Despite the background noise, Caul filters and merges the tapes to create a clear recording with ambiguous meaning. Caul is intensely private, obsessively guarding his own personal life, haunted by guilt from a past job that resulted in three deaths.