The National Gallery, Castellani House presents Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation as its Classic Tuesdays film next week.

According to a press release from the National Gallery, the suspenseful 1974 film was written, directed and produced by Coppola at the height of the Watergate era, when the ethics of private and public life and the powerful effects of secret surveillance held the public’s attention. The Conversation won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974 and was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Sound and Best Original Screenplay in 1975, among several other awards and nominations.

Gene Hackman gives an outstanding performance as a professionally accomplished but personally inhibited surveillance expert who completes a job of secretly taping a young couple then worries, from evidence on his tapes, that his work may place them in danger. Abandoning his professional code of non-involvement, he follows their trail, which shatters the safety of his personal and professional worlds, in a plot whose twists ensnare viewers and main characters alike.

Hackman is supported by a cast of solid professionals including a young Harrison Ford, Frederic Forrest, Cindi Williams, the late John Cazale and Allen Garfield, in a film made between Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II and enhanced by an original and atmospheric piano score by David Shire.

The film starts at 6 pm and is 1 hour 53 minutes long. The public is cordially invited to attend this event. Arrangements will be in place at the National Gallery in the event of inclement weather or a power outage.