CLASSIC FILM CHOICE

THE CONVERSATION (1974) 12 ◆

Thursday, 9pm, BBC4 ★★★★★ This film was part of an incredible creative decade for auteur director Francis Ford Coppola – he won all five of his Oscars, directed the first two Godfather films (1972 and 1974), wrote screenplays for Patton (1970) and The Great Gatsby (1974), and also wrestled with the troubled production for 1979’s Apocalypse Now (Saturday, 12.15am, BBC1). Compared to the vast ensembles of the Godfathers or Apocalypse Now, The Conversation is a much smaller piece, a study of paranoia and loneliness, set in small rooms where Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul (above) conducts his business. Caul is a surveillance expert for hire, whose solitary life is punctuated by the overheard conversations he records, until one phrase – ‘He’d kill us if he got the chance’ – triggers a moral dilemma.