In the 1970s, as America was mired in the aftermath of war, civil unrest and a scandal that brought down a president, the paranoid thriller became a thriving film genre unto itself. Movies like The Parallax View, Klute, All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor captured the attention of a country on edge. 

In the middle of the decade, coming off of the success of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola had the green light to make any movie he wanted. Yes, he shot another edition of the sprawling Corleone epic, but he also spent his capital in Hollywood to create a taught, conspiracy-minded film that became a classic of the paranoid thriller genre: The Conversation.