20 Movies That Prove That The 1970s Was The Best Decade For Film

7. The Conversation

'Harry Caul is an invader of privacy. The best in the business. He can record any conversation between two people anywhere. So far, three people are dead because of him.' Gene Hackman was just one of many actors who had their best years in the 1970s. Hackman's output throughout the decade was impressive, if not erratic, and he had great turns in films as varied as Superman, Prime Cut, The French Connection, Night Moves and the underrated Scarecrow. Hackman was one of the decade's best actors and in The Conversation it could be argued that he gives his best performance as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who has a crisis of conscience when he starts to think that the couple he is spying on are going to be murdered. Taking cues from Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, the film goes into extreme detail exploring themes such as perception versus reality and duty versus occupation. The film was released just a few months before Watergate, causing some to believe that the film is a commentary on the scandal. The Conversation was nominated for Best Picture, but lost to The Godfather: Part II, another Francis Ford Coppola film. The director really did have the midas touch for a time in the seventies. A tension-filled piece of 1970s paranoia that you need to see, if you haven't already.