Posted on 04/10/2024 1:36:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Released between the Godfathers, Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film was a passion project – and its tale of a surveillance expert disturbed by what he hears hits even harder in 2024.
Ever get the feeling you are being watched? How many cameras caught you on your way to work today? How many companies tracked your buying habits on your lunch break? Where is all this information about you going?
These may be obviously pertinent questions in the digital age, when 21st-Century technology gives corporations and institutions unprecedented access to our personal information, but they've been the subject of feverish concern for decades. Arguably it was during the 1970s, especially in the US, where the issue of surveillance and privacy really came into public focus for the first time. The decade's political scandals provided such an increase in awareness surrounding these issues that they quickly filtered into popular culture, especially cinema.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Somehow never heard of it.
Did anyone see this movie? There is a scene that Hackman talks about helping to cheat in the 1960 election.
It’s always been a favorite of mine. Hackman was great. As usual.
It is now on the list. I look forward to it. With Sopranos, Peaky Blinders, and Boardwalk Empire watched recently, it’s all crime all the time!
And consider it was 90%. There really no other main characters.
I watched it a couple of years ago. The technology was more primitive than today, but the government was just as corrupt.
Hackman reprised the role in Enemy of the State with Will Smith (1998).
**Enemy of the State** is another good flick in the meme setting.
Also is very current looing despite being made in 1998.
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjogdKObxrI
Have you seen “Enemy of the State”?
I never heard of it until I came across a legal paper signed by a guy from SF who I knew to be well known, but wasn’t sure for what.
From the Jewish News of Northern California, 1997:
Harold K. “Hal” Lipset, a San Francisco private investigator who died Monday at age 78, will be remembered not only for cracking some of the nation’s most famous cases, but for lending his behind-the-scenes know-how to the Jewish world.
* * *
A private eye for nearly half a century, Lipset died of heart failure at San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital, following surgery for an abdominal aneurysm.
Credited with helping turn the detective business into a respectable venture, he had a list of clients that included law enforcement agencies, government entities, attorneys, businesses, and private citizens.
* * *
Whether Lipset ever brought to the Jewish world such pioneering surveillance tactics as bugging roses or martini olives, Brooks would not say. Once, the crafty detective hid a microphone in a bar of soap, which he took with him into a Turkish bath.
For moves such as these, Lipset is believed to be the inspiration for the private investigator played by Gene Hackman in the 1974 movie “The Conversation.” Lipset served as a technical adviser on the Francis Ford Coppola film.
I always wanted Harry to beat the crap out of Bernie Moran (played by Allen Garfield). He was sooo irritating.
Speaking of surveillance films, ‘The Lives Of Others’ is a terrific film set in East Germany and dealing with the activities of Stasi spying on E.German citizens. William Buckley called it the best film he had ever seen.
It’s in German with English subtitles. It’s not a Mission Impossible type action film, builds slowly with a great ending that ties everything together.
Rush used to speak about that movie often.
Probably as a warning.
Just watched Hackman in “The Package”, it opened the backside of political reality for all to see. “The Conversation” is another in the genre. Love these movies, and Hackman is one of the best ever.
This was Hackman’s best film...
It was relevant when it came out, and that relevance turned into the horrendous tranny that we exist under, today...
Nixon and the 1970s was when the lid of the Nation’s coffin was slammed shut...
Everything since then is just all the permanent nails being driven in one-by-one...
Another good one, sort of in the same vein, is the 1997 Wim Wenders film, The End Of Violence.
Great movie and a great stretch for Cindy Williams
“How’d you know it was my birthday?”
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