The cast also features John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, and Robert Duvall.

In 1995, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

A newspaper headline reveals an executive's supposed death in a car accident, leading Caul to realize that the couple actually murdered the Director.

"[5] On the DVD commentary, Coppola says he was shocked to learn that the film used the same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used to spy on political opponents prior to the Watergate scandal.

Not only was the script for The Conversation completed in the mid-1960s, before Nixon became president, but the spying equipment used in the film was discovered through research and the use of technical advisers, and not, as many believed, by revelatory newspaper stories about the Watergate break-in.

Coppola says that Hackman was at the time an outgoing and approachable person who preferred casual clothes, whereas Caul was meant to be a socially awkward loner who wore a rain coat and out-of-style glasses.

[10] On some cues, Shire used musique concrète techniques, taking the taped sounds of the piano and distorting them in different ways to create alternative tonalities to round out the score.

"[13] Coppola also based Caul on the protagonist of Herman Hesse's 1927 novel Steppenwolf, Harry Haller, a "total cipher" who lives alone in a boarding house.

"[14] Caul was also inspired by Karl Schnazer; a private investigator and occasional actor who appeared in Coppola's early films Tonight for Sure and Dementia 13.

[15] Schnazer recounted to Coppola an incident where a man he had tailed for months failed to recognize him at a party, which later inspired a sequence in the film.

The site's critics consensus reads: "This tense, paranoid thriller presents Francis Ford Coppola at his finest—and makes some remarkably advanced arguments about technology's role in society that still resonate today.

[17] Roger Ebert's contemporary review gave The Conversation four out of four stars and described Hackman's portrayal of Caul as "one of the most affecting and tragic characters in the movies".

[18] In 2001, Ebert added The Conversation to his "Great Movies" list, describing Hackman's performance as a "career peak" and writing that the film "comes from another time and place than today's thrillers, which are so often simple-minded".

[19] In 1995, The Conversation was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[23] In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter ranked the film 8th among 69 counted winners of the Palme d'Or to date, concluding: "Made in a flash between the first two Godfather movies, Coppola’s existential spy thriller has since become a pinnacle of the genre.