When I think of Gene Hackman, I don’t think of Gene Hackman.
I think of Harry Caul, the tortured surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. I think of Harry Moseby, the ex-football player, and detective in Arthur Penn’s
Night Moves. I think of Popeye Doyle, the hardnosed cop in William Friedkin’s The French Connection. Hackman brought to these — and so many other roles — a roughhewn integrity that never drew attention to the actor – only to the character. His pal Dustin Hoffman specialized in neurotics; Hackman was Mr. Average, a common man thrown into uncommon circumstances.
Like Spencer Tracy, Hackman was an actor’s actor. You never saw him working.
Not all of the films he appeared in were classics — have you seen Stanley Donen’s Lucky Lady recently? But he enlivened every one of them for as long as he was onscreen. The film Cisco Pike was a ragged, early 70s attempt at capturing the youth market.
Kris Kristofferson is the eponymous anti-hero, a drug dealer and musician whose career is going nowhere. Hackman played Leo Holland, another cop role. Holland’s pilfered 100 kilos of weed from Mexican peddlers and he blackmails Cisco Pike into selling it.
Toward the end of the movie, Holland pays a call on Cisco’s girlfriend Sue (Karen Black). Sweating profusely, Holland asks for a glass of water. Then he makes a more unusual request: “Could you take my pulse?” He suffers from tachycardia. Sue asks him how he deals with. “Running,” he says — and starts running in place. Car keys in hand, Sue sneaks out of her house, leaving Holland frantically running in the kitchen. It’s a ludicrous moment in a fairly ludicrous film, but Hackman makes you believe it.
The Conversation provided Hackman with a role — and a film — commensurate with his talent. Harry Caul is a man obsessed with privacy. An expert in wire-tapping, he makes his living violating the privacy of others.
We know very little about Harry. He’s Catholic. He plays the saxophone. One of his jobs resulted in someone’s death. He seeks refuge in anonymity and objectivity and never gets involved with the people he’s paid to secretly record.
But then he does. And his carefully constructed world implodes due to a murder. Although Coppola’s script was written in the 1960s, The Conversation was finally made and released during the Watergate era, a time rife with paranoia and illicit surveillance. The film unintentionally struck a chord. 51 years later — in an age of data theft and cyber-spying — The Conversation feels more relevant than ever. Coppola, Hackman, Allen Garfield, Michael Higgins, and Teri Garr do some of their very best work.
He was a five-time Oscar nominee who won for The French Connection in 1972 and Unforgiven in 1992. Hackman’s death comes just four days before the 97th Academy Awards. Hackman retired twenty years ago due to heart problems. He turned his hand to writing and penned several historical novels with Daniel Lenihan, one with Irish novelist and dramatist Sebastian Barry, and a couple on his own.
The circumstances surrounding his death are curious: Hackman, his wife, and their dog were found dead in their New Mexico home on February 26. Foul play isn’t suspected. Suicide is a distinct possibility. Further details are no doubt pending.