7 Underrated Films By Great Directors

3. The Conversation

Although The Conversation does not reach the same heights as the first two Godfather instalments or Apocalypse Now, it is one of the finest films made about the American conscience. Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, an electronic surveillance technician who has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that a couple he is spying on will be murdered, and he delivers what I consider to be the best performance of his career, possibly excluding The French Connection.

Coppola manages to turn an expert thriller into a portrayal of conflict between ritual and responsibility without ever letting the levels of tension subside or the complicated plot get muddled, and like Hitchcock’s Rear Window, it’s also a study of cinematic voyeurism, differing in its concern with eavesdropping rather than watching, and with the added edge that the voyeur is implicated in the killings.

Coppola’s films are always founded on gripping images (the baptism-assassination of The Godfather, the helicopter attack of Apocalypse Now), and here that image is a toilet overflowing with bright red blood (as seen in the video below). This scene is never explained — not even by Coppola in the DVD commentary — and perhaps it sits best that way.

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