1974 was a very good year for Francis Ford Coppola.  Not only did he direct the Oscar-winning Godfather Part II but he also directed another film that was nominated for Best Picture, an intense study of paranoia called The Conversation.  With the party of big, intrusive government coming on strong, I imagine that all of the great paranoia epics of the 1970s will soon feel newly relevant.

Today’s scene that I love comes from The Conversation.  Surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman, giving one of his best performances) fears that his work may lead to murder.  In this scene, he has a nightmare in which he tries, in vain, to talk to one of the people who he has been surveilling.  This scene perfectly captures the horrific logic and helpless feeling of a nightmare.  Harry, who is not the most open or emotional of men, can only be his true self in his dreams.