The Conversation
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: April 7, 1974 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
88
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 17 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Slant MagazineBudd Wilkins
A shout-out to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up, The Conversation perfectly encapsulates the disaffection, alienation, and paranoia infecting America’s body politic in the era of Watergate. Read full review
100
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
A bleak and devastatingly brilliant film. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
As he is played by Gene Hackman in The Conversation, an expert wiretapper named Harry Caul is one of the most affecting and tragic characters in the movies. Read full review
100
EmpireAngie Errigo
Another great, landmark American film of the '70s. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
One of Coppola's very best. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Judith Crist
Under Coppola's direction it succeeds on a variety of levels; as sheer thriller, as psychological study, as social analysis, and as political comment. [08 Apr 1974, p.78]
100
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd
What Coppola achieved is a psychodrama about the dangers of being locked in your own private world, of slipping on noise-canceling headphones of any variety. Listening and hearing are not the same thing. Confusing one for the other can have dire consequences. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh Larsen
For much of The Conversation you think you’re watching a person unraveling, but then the horrifying ending—where the editing and sound design become really sinister—reveals that the movie has been deconstructing the audience as well. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The heart of The Conversation’s appeal, then and now, is the way it combines an exceptional character study, a thriller plot and an ability to superbly convey the unease of a society where blanket surveillance is getting to be the norm. Read full review
90
The GuardianPhilip French
The Conversation is an immaculate thriller, a study in paranoia and loneliness, long in gestation, partly inspired by Antonioni's Blow-Up, and released as the Watergate scandal was unfolding. Read full review
90
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
A major artistic asset to the film - besides script, direction and the top performances - is supervising editor Walter Murch's sound collage and re-recording. Read full review
90
The DissolveScott Tobias
Like Antonioni, Coppola was wrestling with the properties of his chosen medium and showing how art can conceal and deceive as much as it can tell us something plain and true. Read full review
80
CineVueDaniel Gumble
The Conversation, however, feels rather more like watching a an acting masterclass than a true movie masterpiece. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderDon Druker
Gene Hackman excels in Francis Ford Coppola's tasteful, incisive 1974 study of the awakening of conscience in an electronic surveillance technician. Read full review
70
The New YorkerMichael Sragow
Thanks to Walter Murch’s keen, intuitive sound montage and Hackman’s clammy, subtle performance, the movie captures a more elusive and universal fear—that of losing the power to respond, emotionally and morally, to the evidence of one’s own senses. Read full review
70
The New York TimesVincent Canby
Mr. Coppola, the writer as well as the director, has nearly succeeded in making a great film but has, instead, made one that is merely very good. Read full review
60
Village VoiceAndrew Sarris
The Conversation could have used a great deal more vulgar curiosity about its own plot and its own characters. Coppola's good taste has been misplaced on this occasion, but he remains one of our most promising new filmmakers nonetheless. [20 June 1974, p.78]
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