Number 101 on IMDb's Top 250
Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a paranoid surveillance expert running his own company. Caul is obsessed with his own privacy; his apartment is almost bare behind its triple-locked door, he uses payphones to make calls and claims to have no home telephone, and his office is enclosed in wire mesh in a corner of a much larger warehouse. Caul is utterly professional at work but he finds personal contact difficult. He is exquisitely uncomfortable in closely-packed crowds and withdrawn and taciturn in more intimate situations; he is also reticent and secretive with work colleagues. He is nondescript in appearance, except for his habit of wearing a translucent plastic raincoat virtually everywhere he goes (even when it is not raining). Despite his insistence that his professional code means that he is not responsible for worrying about the actual content of the conversations he records or the use to which his surveillance activities are put by his clients, he is in fact wracked by guilt over a past wiretap job that left three people dead. Caul has taken on the task of monitoring a couple's conversation as they walk through a crowded public square. The challenging task is accomplished, but Caul feels increasingly agonized over his doubts about the actual meaning of the conversation and about what may happen to the couple once the client hears the tape. He plays the tape again and again through the movie, refining its accuracy (by catching one key — though crucially ambiguous — phrase hidden under the sound of a street musician: "He'd kill us if he got the chance") and constantly reinterpreting its meaning in the light of what he knows and what he guesses. Hilarity ensues.
Trivia: Reportedly Gene Hackman's favorite of his movies and Francis Ford Coppola's personal favorite of his movies. The blue Mercedes limousine that Cindy Williams is sitting in near the end of the film was won by Francis Ford Coppola on a bet with Paramount Pictures. Coppola had complained about the station wagon he shared with five other passengers during the filming of The Godfather (1972) and studio execs told him if Godfather grossed a certain amount they would spring for a new car. After Godfather was a huge hit, Coppola and George Lucas went to a dealer and picked out the Mercedes, telling the salesman to bill Paramount.
Between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, Francis Ford Coppola filmed this movie, which can fit in easily with the some best Hitchcock ever made. Because of the Godfather movies, this gem is really forgotten. Gene Hackman is great as the introverted paranoid man with a haunted past. And you won't see the twist coming at the end. I highly recommend this movie, especially if you are a hitchcock fan.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment