Critcal Review

For the past two months I have been researching and studying the opening sequence for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation which was released by American Zoetrope and Paramount in 1974 and stars Gene Hackman.

The scene I have been analysing is a single shot, just over three minutes in length, and overlooks Union Square. It starts off quite far away and zooms in slowly, focusing on a mime performing in the square. The mime follows several people, mimicking their actions and it’s when he does this to Harry Caul, Gene Hackman’s character, that focus shifts from the mime to him as he walks off.

By 1974 Coppola was already a respected filmmaker, having made The Godfather previous to The Conversation. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a musician and composer and the family put great emphasis on “talent”, which worried Coppola until his twenties when he discovered that his own talent lay in directing. He worked with Roger Corman on several projects before creating American Zoetrope in 1969 with George Lucas. [1]

It seems Coppola was influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up. In Blow-Up, the main character – who is a photographer – while photographing a couple in a park, unwittingly captures a murder on film. Another influence seems to have been Hal Lipset, a private detective who innovated techniques and technologies in the field of eavesdropping.  [1, 2, 3]

While watching the clip, several questions jump out at the viewer: what’s the purpose of the mime? Why such a high angle? What is the distortion? Why does Caul evade the mime? Most of these questions are hard to answer unless the viewer watches the whole film, and many of the themes in the opening scene are prevalent throughout, such as the jazz music – Caul’s only source of pleasure as a saxophone player; the angle – it reoccurs in the final scene; and the general theme of sound.

Sound is the most important theme of this film. Its use was of critical importance to give the film any substance or meaning, and the fact that Walter Murch crafted the audio with almost surgical delicacy is obvious to all who watch it. Even the presence of the mime is a statement on sound and eavesdropping; he is almost the antithesis of them, and as far as either one are concerned he might as well not exist at all. The jazz music gives a sense of carefree enjoyment – possibly most people’s view of the world, especially a park in which people are supposed to enjoy themselves without fear of being watched – and it’s when the interference cuts off the music does the sense of something more sinister and unseen surface, that even in this place someone is still listening. It’s interesting that all this can be portrayed without a single spoken word; thus is the importance of sound.

But on the other hand would the sound have the same impact if the film had different imagery? What would the opening scene be like without the mime? Or if the camera was on ground level? It would have been very difficult to portray Caul in such little time without the mime there to challenge him, and without the high-angle shot there would be ne sense of power over Caul or of a slight mystery as to what it is exactly that is watching them. Of course we learn soon after this scene that the viewer is looking through a microphone with a telescopic lens attachment, but without that knowledge it is easy to assume that it is a rifle scope. The mime, throughout the sequence, mimics the actions of others, but with each portrayal he manages to insert some form of personality to his behaviour. With Caul, however, he is so anonymous that not even the mime can work out a personality for him. [4]

The park, as previously stated, is supposed to be a place, while being a public area, is also private because nobody is listening to anyone other than the people they are with, or at least that’s how it’s meant to be. If the setting were anywhere else it is doubtful that it would have the same effect. And while sound is one of the main themes that drive the story, it is not more important than any other theme used – paranoia, for example. Without this, Caul would have nothing to drive him throughout the film

So while sound is one of the most important themes of the film, it is not the most important aspect of it. The film’s use of imagery is also crucial in understanding what is happening and to find deeper meaning within the work itself. Cleary not one aspect of this film is more important than any other, but together they create a theme and a film as relevant today as it was in 1974.

[1]: Francis Ford Coppola by Robert K. Johnson, published in 1977 by Twayne Publishers – pages 4 & 5

[2]: The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje, published in 2002 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc – page 152

[3]: http://www.spybusters.com/History_1965_Hal_Lipset.html – [accessed on the 17th/11/2010]

[4]: The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje, published in 2002 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc – page 263