The Corbett Report - Film, Literature and the New World Order
Sep 29, 2026 · 1 hr 11 min · 12 segments
In The Conversation—the 1974 conspiracy thriller/psychodrama from writer/director Francis Ford Coppola—we follow the story of Harry Caul, the greatest surveillance technician in the world. Caul has…
Antony RotunnoGuest
I mean, this is part of what's sometimes called New Hollywood, New Hollywood era.
My friend Scott and I, who I do a lot of film reviews, we call it the Easy Riders Raging Bulls era because there's a book of that name by Peter Biskind.
And basically, there's a period that goes from roughly The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde, just before Easy Rider, to about Raging Bull or Heaven's Gate.
It's about 67 to 80, where it seemed like all the previous rules kind of went out the window.
And suddenly, we've got all these guys that are coming out of film schools, including Francis Ford Coppola.
And it was, I call it almost the swinging seventies because it was, it did fulfill what the sixties did for music, in my opinion.
And this film is, you could almost say a perfect encapsulation because it's got lots of ambiguity.
It's got basically an anti-hero who we are kind of rooting for, but maybe not completely.
And it's quite uncommercial if you think about it, because I'm trying to think of like modern audiences.
I'm sure there's still experimental films being made, but going, oh, why are they repeating that conversation 10 times? Why does he keep listening to it? What's going on? But also it's a very sinister film.
I watched the film plus two commentaries and I spent a few days in the world of Harry Call and rather like Gene Hackman, it's a bit disturbing and it's a bit strange.
And obviously the whole surveillance stuff is disturbing because as you said before, that's part of our world.
So I love the film anyway, but as we always say, when we do film reviews, when you're, when you've got your podcast preparation trousers on, if you like, or your podcast hat on the good films get better.
I've actually got, I don't know if you've heard of flickchart.com. It's a thing where you can enter all your movies and then you can pick them against each other and you end up with some kind of list.
All right, let's situate people for people who truly have no idea what we're talking about.
I mean, this is part of what's sometimes called New Hollywood, New Hollywood era.
My friend Scott and I, who I do a lot of film reviews, we call it the Easy Riders Raging Bulls era because there's a book of that name by Peter Biskind.
And basically, there's a period that goes from roughly The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde, just before Easy Rider, to about Raging Bull or Heaven's Gate.
It's about 67 to 80, where it seemed like all the previous rules kind of went out the window.
And suddenly, we've got all these guys that are coming out of film schools, including Francis Ford Coppola.
And it was, I call it almost the swinging seventies because it was, it did fulfill what the sixties did for music, in my opinion.
And this film is, you could almost say a perfect encapsulation because it's got lots of ambiguity.
It's got basically an anti-hero who we are kind of rooting for, but maybe not completely.
And it's quite uncommercial if you think about it, because I'm trying to think of like modern audiences.
I'm sure there's still experimental films being made, but going, oh, why are they repeating that conversation 10 times? Why does he keep listening to it? What's going on? But also it's a very sinister film.
I watched the film plus two commentaries and I spent a few days in the world of Harry Call and rather like Gene Hackman, it's a bit disturbing and it's a bit strange.
And obviously the whole surveillance stuff is disturbing because as you said before, that's part of our world.
So I love the film anyway, but as we always say, when we do film reviews, when you're, when you've got your podcast preparation trousers on, if you like, or your podcast hat on the good films get better.
I've actually got, I don't know if you've heard of flickchart.com. It's a thing where you can enter all your movies and then you can pick them against each other and you end up with some kind of list.
All right, let's situate people for people who truly have no idea what we're talking about.
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