Film
The world may be celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Godfather right now, but for paranoia aficionados, the biggest Francis Ford Coppola semi-centennial is still two years off. The Conversation came between the first two instalments of his operatic mafia trilogy but is stunningly different in mood. Starring an extraordinary Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who fixates on a fragment of dialogue he has recorded, it culminates in Hackman tearing up his apartment as if he’s tearing at his own skin, all because of the tectonic shift in meaning that can come from a minute change of inflection. A lonely, desperate, guilt-ridden masterpiece. Jessica Kiang
