Favorite shots
March 3, 2008
The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
This shot from Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) is
a brilliant meditation on how sound works in film. The sequence opens as
sound engineer Harry Caul unlocks several deadbolts in order to enter his
apartment. As he opens the door, we hear the shrill sound of an alarm bell.
Coppola slyly refuses to show us the source. 
As the shot switches from the doorway to the apartment (above), the alarm
sound stops as if Harry has turned it off in the hallway that we never see.
Harry enters from frame right and the camera holds on the shot above for
over a minute. Harry wanders in and out of the shot placing packages down
in the kitchen, dialing the telephone, sitting down on the couch. Much of
this activity takes place off screen, forcing us to enter and think about
a world where meaning is made through sound rather than image.
An early post-Watergate film, The Conversation explores questions about the objectivity of recorded media and the psychology of the eavesdropper. Highly recommended.
Walter Murch was the supervising and sound editor of The Conversation. Three short articles about sound by him are available in The Transom Review at: http://www.transom.org/guests/review/200504.review.murch.html
