The Conversation

In the last film by one of Switzerland’s best known classic filmmakers, a former police officer turned private eye working in an industrial northern neighborhood of Zurich gets involved in a case of blackmail and finds himself drawn to the free spirited young woman who is threatening to reveal an affair with his married client. Shot in black and white and filmed mostly on location—including at an annual indoor bicycle race—The Fall shades social realism with a late-noir tint as it follows its protagonist on a tour of the beatnik bars and biker clubs of a city on the verge of a new era.