TV offers up a classic doubleheader this week of 1970’s paranoia, surveillence and secrets, says Richard Lutz
Get the scanning equipment out; brush down the surveillence blocking devices; activate anti-spyware.
Two great films hit the tv screen this Friday when The Anderson Tapes (Film4; 15.10) and The Conversation (Film4; 1.30AM) appear on the same channel.
Both give us prescient interpretations about the emerging world of civic and private surveillance whether it be closed circuit camera, traffic recording devices, apartment building CCTV or government bugs planted in homes for dubious reasons. Both preceded Watergate, the internet, the world of secret tapes, and the growing acceptance that recorded knowledge is power, even if no one is sure what to do with it. Both have outstanding casts, are engineered by masterful directors and leave you with more questions than answers.
Let’s start with The Anderson Tapes. Released in 1971, it has Sean Connery (in his first role without a wig) as a newly released con who wants to rob a whole apartment block in the snazzy Upper East Side of New York. He works alongside old girlfriend Dyan Cannon (hey, Cary Grant’s last wife in real life), Christopher Walken (his first film), Martin Balsam and, in a small way, comic Alan King.
As they plan and carry out their daring raid, they are taped by the Mafia, the government, private security firms and by jealous lovers. Connery and Co. become unwitting surveillence fodder. Their plan is not secret but public to everyone in on the bugging game, even if they don’t really know what to do with the material.
This movie, directed by Sidney Lumet, paints a world still frankly innocent about the power and muscle of secret recordings in a modern world. I won’t spoil the movie itself- it has a slightly dated 40 year old visual feel to it- but Lumet does ask whether anyone really is in control in this early era of surveillence.
It is a question still asked today. Amazingly, the sharp-eyed folks over on Film4 may not have realised that The Conversation was a superb partner for the Connery vehicle because they scheduled it ten hours later and not back-to-back. They missed a trick here.
It is one of my favourite films; directed by Francis Ford Coppola in a break between Godfather 1 and Godfather 2. This has Gene Hackman as surveillance expert Harry Caul in San Francisco who takes on any bugging job. He is the best in the game and only cares that his secret recordings are of superior technical quality. He’s a geek. But one tape, of a couple discussing a plan, freaks him. He unwisely tries to stop what he thinks is a murder in the making.
The Hackman figure has doubts, guilt. His solemn solitude turns to paranoia. The coldhearted spy has a twist of conscious. Coppola gives us a feeling of a world that is not benign. Everyone is suspect and everyone is victim. The final scene, which I won’t describe, shows us Harry Caul being as much a target as a spy in a world being bugged to death. It was reportedly Hackman’s favourite role.
Both movies held up a mirror to the future, our world, where all information is available, it seems, with a flick of a button. The Conversation, by the way, was nominated for Best Picture in ’74. It was beaten by Coppola’s masterpeice, Godfather 2.
What a year for Coppola.