A semi-clad model gazed out from the cover of the May 20, 1966, issue of Life magazine, a fearful expression on her face. She looked over her shoulder—perhaps aware, perhaps not—of the electronic recording device, about the size of a matchbook, taped to her bare back. The cover story addressed the high-tech surveillance beginning to infiltrate every aspect of American life; espionage devices and techniques had trickled down from the Cold War into the domestic consumer market.
Coppola's script became The Conversation, which took on new relevance as it went into production against the backdrop of a metastasizing Watergate scandal; the movie would be awarded the top prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, just a few months before Richard Nixon resigned the presidency.
'Bugging is so shockingly widespread and so increasingly insidious,' the story proclaimed, 'that no one can be certain any longer that his home is his castle—free of intrusion.' This represented the growing anxieties about privacy in the face of advancing technology.
The film's distillation of twitchy unease and conspiratorial thinking was more ambient than politically specific, reflecting a broader cultural anxiety about surveillance that resonated throughout the 1970s.
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