The Conversation

Including analysis by Brenda Austin-Smith

"The Conversation has been described as an "Orwellian morality play" in which the spy becomes the spied upon, and technology is used against the user. (1) In generic terms, the film is a psychological thriller that pays stylistic homage to Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) in its use of repetition and its parsing of sounds rather than images to create ambiguity, and to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) in its depiction of a hotel murder"

The narrative of The Conversation relies as much on the subjective reality of a single character than on the world outside him. The sound of the film reaches the audience through the surveillance microphones, filters, and amplifiers of Harry Caul. The whole film hinges on his personal interpretation of a single line of dialogue: "he'd kill us if he had the chance." Caul's past work might have been the cause for the murder of his subjects, and he is paranoid his current assignment will lead to the same end. His work does play a role in murder, but the imagined victim turns out to be the perpetrator.

The complexities of Caul's personality are presented to the audience through a series of relatively insignificant moments. The sum of all these layers gives us a picture of a disfunctional man, paranoid to the point of paralysis. The audience is presented the story through the eyes, and more importantly, ears of Harry Caul, and the narrative comes to resemble his personality.

"In his creation of a narrative of Ann's oppression, persecution, and possible death, Harry acts as a film editor, marrying image track to sound track to produce a coherent story. And like the film viewer, Harry fills in narrative gaps and ambiguities, supplementing what is visible and audible with what he believes to be the truth."

The film succeeds because the protagonist is so compelling that the story surrounding him is irrelevant. The audience cannot help but become transfixed by the subjective reality of Harry Caul.