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I thought that's what you meant, but I don't think it's a problem. Here's how I've always thought of it: given how much is indeterminate in general in that movie, how do we know what we're hearing? What I mean is, is the new possible tone actually objectively derived from the recording, or is this Caul's new interpretation of the dialogue? Have we just sunk one level deeper into his paranoid head and are now hearing the new frightening way he is interpreting the meaning of the dialogue, and whose seeming concrete existence in the recording just matches how concretely he believes it to be there? There are several sequences in the movie that are edited in a way that call into question some of the things Caul appears to be seeing (blood in the toilet), so it's still possible that what we hear at that moment is Caul's interpretation only.

Because of that added possibility, that we're just in Caul's head at that moment, the movie keeps its paranoid atmosphere without cheating.

And in my opinion Coppola's rationalization is disingenuous: the plot point can only work if he uses a completely different line reading. If he stuck the original line reading in there, the 'reveal' would make no sense whatsoever. And therein lies the problem.

I think, tho', that the different line reading is merely meant to signify Caul's interpretation of it (not necessarily what he's hearing but what he's now presuming could be the meaning behind it, and therefore what he's presuming is the meaning behind all the subsequent and perhaps benign events). It's functioning a bit like exposition, as if Caul, listening to the tape again, says outloud in that hackneyed movie way "but maybe that means he'd kill them if he had the chance!" It works, I think, because this is a possibility rather than the actual objective reality. We can still doubt.

For me (and zedz said part of this above), the point is that his paranoia is just mis-directed; he's right to suspect the big corporation, Harrison Ford and so on, but wrong to think that the young couple (and not Robert Duvall) are the victims. If anything, he isn't paranoid enough, and this point is made several times in the film when he opens up or trusts someone and is immediately betrayed.

Part of the point of that key repeated line is that it clearly indicates something bad is going on: it tells Harry, and us, that this young couple fear for their lives. What it doesn't tell us, without a bit of context, is that they're going to deal with this problem by means of a pre-emptive strike. They don't need protecting; and perhaps it's true that if they hadn't killed Duvall, he would have killed them instead. What's really awful about the ending is that Harry realises there are no good guys in this story, no innocent victims - except him, perhaps.

Most importantly, no one has yet mentioned the final scene: I don't know how others interpret this, but I think it proves that Harry doesn't know the half of what's been going on. His whole world really is swarming with bugs, traps and conspiracies, and he is powerless to stand up to any of this, or protect himself or anyone else; he can't even get a firm hold on who exactly needs protecting. But there's no doubt that the conspiracy is real and malign. That he responds to all this at the end by playing his (probably bugged) saxophone is a wonderful touch, and I love how the camera pans from side to side like a surveillance camera.

With regard to the twist, this never bothered me in the slightest - this too is, I think, a wholly successful aspect of the film, and one of the moments I treasure most. It sends shivers down my spine every time I see it. I don't agree with you, zedz, that the ending wouldn't work without the changed intonation. If the Frederic Forrest character still just said 'He'd kill us if he got the chance', without emphasising the 'us', a sharp viewer could still figure out what this actually meant. All Coppola does is change the intonation to spell the point out for the audience, and also to heighten the dramatic impact of the revelation - as a less than sharp viewer myself (I didn't figure out the ending of Blair Witch until hours after the film finished, when I was trying to sleep...), I appreciate this kind of thing, but I do also think it 'points' the horror of this moment.

What Sausage and matrix say about this being Harry's re-interpretation of the line also works, but I would place more emphasis on the way it fits in with the two other big nightmare moments leading up to the twist: the bloody hands thrust against the hotel window and the blood billowing up in the toilet bowl, both supremely creepy and shocking touches (the first anticipated when Harry is shocked by a loud noise as he listens in on the room next door). These moments, and the montage of details which precede 'He'd kill us if he got the chance', sufficiently establish an air of uncanny dread to make the change in intonation work - it's the icing on the cake.

Beatty reacts to the Parallax test very much like Hemmings in Blow Up, impassive and un-moved; at the end he runs towards the light but is eclipsed and blown away, just as Hemmings looks for a body and ends up vanishing himself.

that his apartment is bugged and that he's now the target of malign forces. But that's not assured, and that's where his paranoia kicks in. Perhaps people are after him, perhaps no one is. Perhaps this is a vast, sinister conspiracy that now has him in mind, perhaps it's a simple Hitchcock-like murder plot that isn't concerned with him. By the time he rips apart his rooms, it hardly matters any more if they even have been bugged. Harry has descended so far into paranoia that he'll tear apart everything looking for that one little clue, that one little piece of the puzzle, always afraid that everyone--and no one--is watching him and plotting against him. I think it's that psychological condition more than any specific plot point that is the true object of the ending scene.

Harry is playing the saxophone, then the Harrison Ford character (at least I think it's him) calls him on the phone and plays back a recording of the music Harry has just been playing. You might have forgotten this detail, but I'm pretty sure it proves the flat is bugged.

You're right, I had forgotten that point. Which doesn't mitigate the fact that Harry has now given over totally to paranoia as the fear of constant surveillance consumes him, with destructive consequences (demolishing his room is symbolic), as indeed he never finds what he's looking for. But I was definitely misremembering how indeterminate the threat actually was in the movie. Obviously the fact that he did not find the bug impressed me more forcibly than the phone call. Rewatching the ending, I don't wonder if the bug isn't in the phone, as it rings once with no one on the other end (as if the bug has to be activated), and only then rings the second time with the recording playing back just the last bit of music made after the first phone call. But therein lies the paranoia: it could be anywhere and nowhere. They could even stop listening to Caul the very next day and he'd still be in a paranoid hell. That's what I meant about the psychology of paranoia: there doesn't need to be an actual threat once you're in that mental state. And it doesn't really matter if they'll actually continue to watch Caul. He'll always think they're watching, and that fear and constant suspicion will cause him to see threats anywhere and everywhere if even they aren't there. That, anyway, is what I've always taken away from the ending, in which the threat of surveillance kind of hangs over everything with the camera panning back and forth and the bug seemingly never to be found.

So I still think the movie is more about the psychological condition of paranoia than, for instance, The Parallax View (itself fantastic). A film like that is paranoid as a movie, and we the audience may leave it feeling more paranoid, but it is not about the condition of paranoia since the lead is interpreting things rightly and his interpretations are constantly confirmed by the plot. The Conversation is about the compulsive need to draw out the sinister meaning behind a single sentence (a more truly paranoid act than following around shadowy figures who actually do have bombs and guns), a meaning that might be totally different than the one that had been assumed, and which the plot isn't constantly confirming. And it ends with the lead character possibly hallucinating awful images and tearing apart his life looking for a bug he may never find, the camera imparting an omnipresent sense of surveillance as it pans back and forth. Harry is now entirely in the grip of paranoia, and we can wonder if he'll ever stop searching for bugs and shadowy figures wherever he goes, if they are there or not. The movie allows that omni-directed fear to hang over the movie at the end and go unresolved, so I think it is trying to get inside that psychological state more than the others mentioned.

Dont' forget earlier in the film a competitor claimed to have created a device to turn any existing phone into a recording device. That would coincide perfectly with the fact that the "message" was after the first phone call which turned his phone into a listening device. The fact that he does not remember this says much about his character.

Beatty doomed as soon as he sets foot in the trap, and the trap lies everywhere.

it's presumably testing for genuine recruits and for patsies. That whole sequence is so unnerving that you start worrying about your own responses.

The idea that the trap is everywhere ties in to what I love so much about the ending: how as he runs towards the doorway the shot makes it seem like he's running in place and it's the doorway, with its fatal guardian, that moves towards him. It's like as the plot goes on the whole world just leans in and exerts this massive pressure on him until he can't go anywhere no matter how hard he tries--he's trapped, running in place. Speaking of that, the ending with all the gangways reminded me of a rat in a maze. Makes quite a contrast to the earlier, very much conventional car chase which is the point where the movie seems most like a normal thriller, before the parallax corporation begins to intrude on the narrative and Beatty is increasingly framed within imposing and oppressive architecture. It's unnerving that no matter how far Beatty gets away from civilization, going out to the boonies or far out onto the water, the corporation reaches out and pushes him right back to where he started. It's a paranoid movie because almost the entire world can seem to be subject to a sinister design.

playing the saxophone at the end. There is almost a sense of peace here, as if he knows there is nothing more he can do to resist the intrusion of dark forces into his life. His destruction of the Virgin Mary statue is a key turning point here. His tragedy has always been that he can't do his job without getting people hurt: one of the reasons he is so paranoid is that the people he bugged on a previous job ended up dead. But at the end of the film, he can at least retreat into his music - something that's just for him, something that no 'bugger' can really get to, and that is guaranteed not to place him or anybody else in danger. The camera may pan back and forth like a surveillance camera, but this also signifies that it is mechanical and inhuman. Harry himself stands out in that final shot as a vestige of humanity, victimised almost into oblivion, but still clinging on by a thread. In a way it's actually less bleak than the endings of La Notte and Red Desert, which I compared it to earlier. It's not totally unlike the ending of another great paranoid film from this era, Rosemary's Baby.

which joins Chinatown in that small, select group of films with tacked on unhappy endings. Marvellous stuff.

Isn't the whole point, tho', that his his job and his identity--his whole state, really--is grounded solely on perception, indeed a perception that becomes increasingly unstable? He starts to doubt his earlier interpretation of the conversation, he 'discovers' a new possible reading of it (which could be entirely in his head), and chases down a murder whose evidence he could, in his panic, be hallucinating (the editing leaves room to suspect this). In the end he cannot even find the one thing a surveillance expert ought to be able to find, a bug, which guts him because he is no longer the outside observer, the one who's above it all, watching and explicating from a safe distance, exerting control by gathering hidden knowledge. He's now the one being watched (an even more isolating position than his former one), and that's significant considering people go into surveillance because they don't want to be surveilled themselves.

It's not that Caul is simply paranoid, or that he's like this for the whole movie. What I'm saying is that the trajectory of the movie is to leave him with paranoia, and only that, since the threat is not resolved. Consider two other possible endings and what they'd mean: 1. if Harry receives the call, hears the recording, is told he's being watched, and the movie freeze frames on his face before fading to black. 2. If Harry receives the call, ect., then tears his room apart like usual, gives up, plays his sax, only to suddenly realize where the bug is and pulls it out. If 1., the ending is about the awful sinking feeling of Harry now being in explicit danger, the focus of the conspiracy, and his immediate panic, surprise, and fear at this revelation. If 2., the ending implies he's paranoid and destructive, but that his knowledge and training will see him through to the other side with the further implication that he does at least have the tools to play this game.

The actual ending dilutes the explicitness of the danger in 1. by focusing on the psychological position it puts him in over a dramatic reinforcement of his own danger, and it avoids the feeling of capability and resolution in 2. by failing to resolve. Without that resolution, Harry must remain in a somewhat indeterminate state of worry. I'm not saying the threat of surveillance isn't real, I'm saying such a threat doesn't need to be followed up to have its effect. Since Caul doesn't find the bug, we can assume he will continue to look for evidence of surveillance just like anyone else would, and his compulsive, detail-obsessive nature will take over, analyzing and re-analyzing and piecing together the evidence of what could be a coherent plot or could be an empty threat, it makes no difference to his state. And with the possibility that he's already hallucinated once, we can imagine he may start seeing things that aren't there all over again. Point being, if he's surveilled or not makes no difference, he'll act the same either way.

I think one of the major implications of the movie is that when Harry's temperament is focused on other people, it's working constructively; but if his compulsions are turned on himself, they'll become destructive. Without the resolution of finding the bug, the movie leaves us in an indefinite state, and it's those types of states where paranoia fully takes over. Harry's carefully protected, hermetic world (symbolized by his apartment) has been invaded, leaving him to tear it apart while he looks for what he cannot find, his former security.

I've always thought the final sax playing to be very sad. It's really the only thing he has left, and he has to feel like there is always an implied audience.

As such, I think the saxophone playing is intensely sad- it's not private anymore, and it may well be where they've put the bug. Harry's taken himself apart (including the little religious figurine) but he'll never feel safe again, because his extra skin is gone. It doesn't really matter whether they're all that interested in him.

Mr Sausage wrote:It's not that Caul is simply paranoid

Yes, that wasn't quite the right phrase to use - I didn't mean to simplify your argument, or imply that it was simplistic. I'm just more fixated on the idea that Harry has pretty much figured out what's happened, and perhaps even why it's happened. I re-watched the ending as well (love the floor tiles in the evil corporation HQ), and was struck by what the Harrison Ford character (turns out his name is Stett) says over the phone: 'We know you know, Mr Caul. For your own benefit, don't get involved any further. We'll be listening to you.' First of all, consider that first phrase: it suggests that when Stett sees Harry at the press conference, he knows from the look on Harry's face that he's figured it out. The Cindy Williams character sees this too. I think the following sequence showing what 'really happened' in the hotel room probably is accurate.

The question I've always been left with is, why was Harry hired to make the recording, and what exactly did the Robert Duvall character make of it? He appears loving and trusting in the hotel room, just before Frederic Forrest wraps the plastic sheet around him. Did Stett lure him into thinking he was one step ahead of the young couple, with the aid of the recording, which suggests that they feel vulnerable and threatened; but actually Stett was in league with the couple to help them get control of the company? That would suggest that Harry was hired specifically because they knew he'd be able to decipher 'He'd kill us if he got the chance', so that this would make Duvall think precisely what Harry thinks: that the young couple are the ones in the weaker position. This would certainly strengthen the idea that the new line reading at the end is a re-interpretation: 'They wanted me to hear it that way; but if they'd been honest it would have sounded like this.'

It's fascinating that the film cuts from the new line reading straight to a shot of Harry, in his apartment, playing his saxophone. Throughout the film, he's invested so much in an idealised vision of this couple, where he saves them (and especially her; remember he only meets her in the dream) from the bad guys and so vicariously participates in that idealised relationship. He trusts this relationship in a way that he can't trust any of his own relationships; and the moment when he realises what that sentence really means signals the disintegration of this ideal. He'd been assuming a simple battle between good and evil here (doesn't he say in the dream 'I'm not afraid of death, but I am afraid of evil'?), and obviously his religious faith feeds into this, but now he finds out the sweet young couple are cold-blooded murderers. And his response is to play the saxophone. Just before he plays it again, for the final time, we get a flashback to the couple in the park, exchanging sweet nothings; again, the film cuts straight from this to Harry on his saxophone. In the first instance it's a retreat, an acknowledgement that there's nothing more he can do with this case, and it's interesting that at first he plays along to a recording of a jazz band - this at least is a relationship he can fall back on. I guess anyone who's come away from a failed relationship and found solace in a good book or film can understand this.

But Stett takes this away from him by winding that 'conversation' - the one between Harry and the recording - backwards and then re-playing it to him. 'We own this as well.' It's ironic that Stett tells him not to get involved any further, as it doesn't seem like Harry was planning to do anything else. And you're right, Mr Sausage, that the emphasis then is not on the 'danger' he's in, but on his attempt to re-assert his dignity as king of the buggers. 'They think I won't pull my curtains down, but I will. They think I won't rip open this religious figurine, but I will. They think I won't tear off the wallpaper and the floorboards, but I will.' The music emphasises this sense that he is descending by stages, going to ever greater extremes to resist what's happening to him. Yes it's very sad, but there's also something a little heroic about it - one of the points I've been trying to make is that this film makes us love Harry Caul in a way that Pakula's films never ever invite us to love their protagonists.

The saxophone playing at the end is certainly more tragic than I remembered, and perhaps I have been straining a little in trying to make this seem like a redemptive ending. I remembered Harry as sitting more or less in the middle of the room, at the centre of the panning shot, but actually he's tucked himself away behind a wall, like a cornered rat. And just as Shire's piano has accompanied each stage of his descent up to this point, so now it returns to the theme from the opening of the film, emphasising once again Harry's solitude. In fact, he's accompanying the piano at this point, and complementing it beautifully; since the piano represents him and his isolation, I suppose you could say he's accompanying himself, in conversation with himself, and this marks that isolation as permanent and definitive.

But, to come back to the last line of the film, Stett also said 'We'll be listening to you'. What does that say about the bad guys? Someone is actually sitting somewhere listening to recordings of everything Harry does, and Harry's not doing anything besides playing the saxophone on his own. They played the music back at him to scare him into silence, and his playing at the end comes across as a final gesture of defiance: 'They think I won't play my saxophone, but I will.'

Nice comments on the raincoat/condom/caul, matrix - with this in mind I noticed that at the very end of the film, Harry's shirt is so soaked with sweat that it looks a bit like the raincoat, a thin, moist film through which his pink skin is clearly visible. In one sense they've taken away his privacy, but in another sense they really haven't. They underestimate him at every stage. Stett can listen all he wants, but in the end Harry knows what's been going on - he's more than a mere patsy - and conversely no one can gather any information about him, or really gain access to his inner life. So he is still king of the buggers at the end; he'd just be better off if he weren't.