A BIRTHDAY YOU CAN'T REFUSE

April 7 . . .

Happy birthday today to one of the great mavericks of modern cinema, Francis Ford Coppola, born on this date in 1937 in Detroit, Michigan. He filmed his first movie on an 8mm movie camera at the age of 10 after recuperating from a yearlong bout with polio. In 1962 he finagled a job as assistant director and all-around errand boy for the patron saint of all young filmmakers, Roger Corman. After directing a low-budget horror flick in Ireland, he directed his own light-hearted coming-of-age comedy, ‘You’re A Big Boy Now’ (1967). Hollywood took note and entrusted him to direct two films, ‘Finian’s Rainbow’ (1968) and ‘The Rain People’ (1969). Both flopped, and Coppola was on the verge of bankruptcy when he signed on to helm ‘The Godfather’ (1972), one of the biggest moneymakers ever. And one of the great roller-coaster directorial careers in Hollywood was off to an auspicious start.

Over the years, Coppola has directed some of the most audacious, daring and occasionally successful movies in the American oeuvre (‘The Godfather, Part II’ [1974]; ‘Apocalypse Now’ [1979], - and quite a few that paled, flailed and failed with audiences (‘One From The Heart’ [1982]; ‘The Cotton Club’ [1984]; ‘Gardens of Stone’ [1987]). But one of his greatest achievements is one of his most rarely-screened experiments, the brilliant, taut, and unsettling piece called ‘The Conversation’ (1974).

In one of his most complex performances, Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, one of the top surveillance experts in the country, a deeply moral man in a deeply sleazy business who feels guilty about what he does for a living: Invading people’s privacy. When wealthy businessman Robert Duval hires him to trail his wife (Cindy Williams), whom he rightfully suspects of having an affair, Caul stumbles across a murder plot. All is not what it seems in the labyrinthine puzzle of a movie, which is not so much a thriller as a fascinating character study of a man who has misplaced his moral compass. Featuring Harrison Ford in a rare role as a heavy and the late John Cazale as Harry’s worshipful assistant. ‘The Conversation’ was one of the first – and still the best – of the paranoiac thrillers. The DVD features a riveting feature-length commentary by Coppola.