Francis Ford

The Conversation
$2.99
More than any other DVD that I've rented or owned, I had the highest expectations for this, and I wasn't disappointed. Few other motion pictures deserve a good DVD edition as much as Francis Ford Coppola's introspective masterwork, a extraordinarily nuanced and deeply involved study of alienation, privacy and guilt. Coppola's flawless, unhurried direction and Gene Hackman's entirely credible performance - as a surveillance expert whose interest in an assignment involves him personally - drive this moody, suspenseful and deeply personal story. For me, this movie is a benchmark by which all other serious crime dramas and filmic character studies are measured.

The feature's audiovisual quality is quite fine. Transferred from a slightly gritty print (probably the best available), its color is much richer than that of the VHS edition. Every frame of this film's composition is imbued with urgent meaning, and this detail is emphasized by the restored 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Because it needs to be carefully heard as much as seen, a first-rate soundtrack is far more essential for this movie than most others. Exceptionally remastered, the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track is lucid and features a carefully balanced mix - not a single noise or line of dialogue strays from sonic equilibrium. While the French dubbed track is ably voiced, it's hardly mixed with such care.

Large and yellow, the English subtitles can't be missed. The transcription of this text is entirely adequate.

Big, colorful thumbnail film stills highlight the scene selection menu. One of my few gripes with Paramount discs is that the chapters are too long and few between, and therefore difficult to navigate. Even though "The Conversation" is broken into only twelve chapters, I can't complain; the film consists mostly of long sequences and really should be linearly viewed, anyway.

Yet again, I was ready to sit through another boring featurette shot eight or nine years ago - one of ten thousand glossy productions that might teach me a few things about the film via interviews with crew members and maybe, if I was lucky, Gene Hackman. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that "Close-Up on the Conversation" is an American Zoetrope promotional short that was shot on location in late 1972 between and during takes, and features brief interviews with a mannerly Hackman and the insightful, bearlike and necessarily LOUD Coppola. It's a great little documentary that places the audience in the midst of the film's shooting, granting a pleasantly intimate - albeit brief - perspective of the production.

Although I can imagine being intrigued by it if I'd seen it prior in a theater in '74, the theatrical trailer has quite a few flaws common to those of the period: it's poorly edited, the expository narrative is all too literal and too much is revealed. It's a charming little bit of promotional kitsch for those who have seen the movie, but the uninitiated would do better to view the movie first.

Coppola's commentary track makes for entertaining (if not wholly absorbing) listening. His insights concerning his screenplay are unsurprising and fairly mundane, but the stories he has to tell regarding the movie's production are invariably interesting. Perhaps because he has relatively little to say about this favorite of his own works, much of the track consists of information about his private life and career that often hasn't much to do with the film. For me, this was only mildly engaging; the degree of a viewer's interest in Coppola will probably determine whether or not they enjoy it.
As yet more evidence that film editors produce superior commentary tracks to those of cinematographers on the rare occasions when they do so, Walter Murch's commentary draws on his prodigious memory to provide the viewer with a wealth of technical information and a keen perspective on how it relates to the film's story, all accessible in layman's terms. Murch's most interesting revelations involve three scenes that were cut and reworked quite differently than how they were originally written and shot, all of which were granted a greater profundity and impact as a result. I was also amazed to learn that this - among the most intricately and intuitively edited mainstream movies I know of - was Murch's first assignment on a feature film! This commentary is sparse almost to the point of being periodic - at times, Murch has nothing to say for as long as four of five minutes, but I'd rather this than a lot of insubstantial babble. He does reveal the film's penultimate plot twist fairly early in the movie, so those who haven't seen the movie should beware of this spoiler.

Scored by David Shire's memorable theme, the main menu's selections are brightly visible against a film still of Harry Caul's work studio, the tape recorder of which features animated reels. The special features menu is also animated by a closer shot of that recorder, playing the conversation itself, rewinding, playing again with improved fidelity, forwarding, playing with ever-improved clarity...but never revealing the first of this great movie's many secrets...!

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