The Conversation

Perhaps the most renowned film maker of his generation, Francis Ford Coppola emerged in the seventies with his mega blockbuster The Godfather. Following his great success Coppola released a film starring Gene Hackman entitled The Conversation. While the content of the film will forever be remembered as outstanding, the film did not merit the same success as it's predecessor.

The protagonist in The Conversation is an independent bugger and private investigator of sorts by the name of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman). Caul is a middle aged man who might be referred to as unstable as he is constantly showing symptoms of paranoia and neuroticism. Harry also displays a reluctance to discuss past experiences such as his departure from the East Coast and other key aspects of his past that could have led to his nervous attitude. The inciting incident in the film occurs when Harry hears the female who he has been hired to bug utter the words "He'd kill us if he had the chance". This statement separates this case from any other case that Harry is done and is what sparks Harry's quest for the truth. The obligatory scene in this film occurs after Harry sees the blood in the toilet and decides that he must pay a visit to the director if he is to decipher what is really going on. Upon arrival at the director's office Harry makes two attempts to get through to the director but is promptly denied by the security guards. This gives the viewer the impression that Harry has lost his confrontation with the director and thus all hope of making sense of this tangled web of paranoia and deceipt.

Given that the plot of the movie revolved around sound it is only natural that the use of sound in this film was absolutely fantastic. The static noise that is heard constantly throughout film, although somewhat annoying and confusing throughout the first ten minutes, eventually shines through as an ingenious method employed by Coppola to increase the realism of the picture. A fine example of diegetic sound in the film occurs in the final scene when the viewer finds Caul alone in his newly decorated apartment playing his own sad and lonely melody. The sound coming from Caul's trumpet is no doubt diegetic as it is a character within the movie that is making this sound. It also serves as an excellent metaphor to Harry's personality and situation. An example of non diegetic sound would be any piece of music played