Francis Ford Coppola's atmospheric, subdued tale of audio surveillance experts – the hackers of the 1970s, if you like – has a quiet, sometimes stylised intensity that gives it an immediate, irresistible quality. Gene Hackman and John Cazale are brilliantly cast as a surveillance team hired to eavesdrop and record a conversation between a couple in a crowded Union Square, San Francisco. The ensuing conspiratorial web Hackman finds himself entangled in after beginning to suspect a degree of foul play that his conscience cannot live with is brilliantly realised by Coppola's narrative and visual style, which feels like a clammy grasp of paranoia. Unlike Alan J. Pakula's renowned trilogy, the paranoia in The Conversation is not global in scope; it's personal and intimate. Coppola is perhaps at his most aesthetically creative here, drawing inspiration from European cinematic trends and toying carefully and controlledly with style and composition. Fresh off the success of The Godfather, he's a writer and director in full bloom, with the confidence to create a slow-burning character study that gradually evolves into a sneaky thriller, raising several interesting ethical questions in the process. The ending is as clever as it is thought-provoking. These people inhabit a world where personal information is sparse and carefully protected – it's a world quite different to our modern connected reality. Robert Duvall appears in an uncredited role as the man who hired Hackman. Also with solid supporting work from Allen Garfield, Harrison Ford, and Teri Garr.