“He’d kill us if he got the chance.” Those words, spoken by a bespectacled, beige-suited young man (Frederic Forrest) as he wanders through Union Square in San Francisco with his lover (Cindy Williams), are secretly recorded by the surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) in The Conversation (1974). Their meaning, mulled over at length, becomes vital in unlocking the story’s mysteries. One of the key thrillers of its decade, Francis Ford Coppola’s film was also an eloquent expression of paranoia in a country reeling from Watergate.
Forrest, who has died aged 86, was the ideal actor to throw certainties into doubt. In The Conversation, he is bookish, furtive and opaque. The audience never becomes properly acquainted with him, though recordings of his voice and image are repeatedly offered up for our scrutiny so that the act of studying his expressions and intonations becomes central to experiencing the film. Without realising it, we channel a good deal of energy into deciphering his motives.
