Event

About Peter Rainer:

Peter Rainer has 30 years of professional experience as a film critic. “There is still nothing like seeing a movie in a theater on a big screen and being awed by the whole experience — that communal feeling,” says Rainer.

Rainer is currently the film critic for the Christian Science Monitor and can be heard regularly on NPR’s “Film Week” on kpcc-fm. He was one of three finalists in 1998 for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism and is a three-time winner of the Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for best online film critic.

Rainer is president of the National Society of Film Critics and has appeared as a film commentator on CNN, ABC News World Tonight, Bloomberg Radio and Nightline. Peter served as film critic for New York Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, New Times Los Angeles and Los Angeles magazine. His writings have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and GQ.

He has also written and co-produced two A&E biographies, on Sidney Poitier and John Huston, as well as co-authoring the film “Joyride” (1977). He has served on the main juries for the Venice and Montreal film festivals.

About the film:

Made in 1974 between Francis Coppola’s two masterpieces, The Godfather and The Godfather II, The Conversation, far less well known, is, in its small scale way, almost as good. It’s about a surveillance wire tap expert, played by Gene Hackman in his finest performance, who believes he may be implicated in a murder plot. The film is especially relevant today because of the issues it raises about how technology invades our privacy, and for film students, it’s a great example of how sound design on a low budget (courtesy of the amazing Walter Murch) can be an essential storytelling ingredient. It’s also a great example of how a thriller/detective story can also serve as the vehicle for profound observations about the human condition.