I don’t enjoy modern movies.
Many things ruined them for me. Over the top special effects, over the top stars. Agendas. Politics. I like a good story with good acting. I watch movies to escape. I prefer watching the classics. 60’s. 70’s. 80’s.
Modern movies are alright sometimes. What burns the most about them is that they feel churned out. Not produced. To fill a need for consumption and not to tell a good story. The classics relied on acting. The characters had to be authentic. People who watched the movies wanted to be convinced. You had to be convinced that Martin Riggs was crazy. Psycho made you nervous to get inside a shower and close the curtain. They left an impact on you long after the credits rolled.
There are modern masters when it comes to making movies. Nolan. Villeneuve. Tarantino. Their movies have elements of the classics as well as new spins which make them interesting to watch.
On Sundays I enjoy watching a movie to wind down and this weekend I found another classic from 1974. The Conversation staring the late Gene Hackman. Harry is an interesting character and dislikes the job he does. He knows all the pitfalls around surveillance and during the movie you hear him say the following:
I’m in a payphone. I don’t have a home telephone.
The Conversation, 1974
The main character is a paranoid personality. His fear around being surveilled himself is apparent from early on in the movie. Doesn’t trust easily and also shies away from people. Wilmer Cable Butler does a great job with his cinematography and the initial scene is shot expertly. As the viewer follows the camera it shows people passing between camera and the actors. The camera almost tried to escape being seeing. This brings back another piece of quality from the earlier movies – street scenes often had plenty of onlookers while the filming was happening.
When Harry meets the Director’s assistant you can see the concept of surveillance being extended. A telescope in the room pointing towards the city and the assistant asking Harry “What do you see?” makes him seem more like a voyeur than a surveillance expert.
Something interesting I noticed midway during the movie is that noticed a cage like area in Harry’s workshop. The workshop is an empty office floor, also adding to the atmosphere, and in one part of the floor is a chain link fence acting as a cage. This made me think of another Gene Hackman movie: Enemy of the State (1998) where Hackman plays a completely opposite character who is super paranoid, a bit more than Harry, and does his level best to avoid being surveilled. Looking at the age of these characters it becomes easy to almost draw a line to these two characters. In an alternate universe Enemy of the State might have been a spinoff movie which continues with Harry’s arc.
In the old days, we actually had to tap a wire into your phone line. Now with calls bouncing off satellites, they snatch’em right out of the air.
In searching for this I found a website which links the two movies together much more succinct than my attempts. You can read the article here.
It relates to us today on social media where everyone watches everything. Recordings are made; who said what. Our conversations can be brought back and often in online debates (and sadly IRL) our words get shown to us verbatim. Social media has a voyeuristic side to it – how many times have you heard someone say (in jest) “I’m going to stalk you on Facebook”.
Movie posters.
My search for a movie to watch often starts with a trip to Pinterest and searching for “Retro movie posters”. I found these three and the one on the right is my favorite of the bunch.
tl;dr
Worth watching? Definitely. And with the vague connection between this and Enemy of the State I think I might have found my next movie to watch on Sunday.
Thanks for reading : )