It’s not unprecedented of course: Ingmar Bergman famously made Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal in one year (1957) and Hitchcock would often have two films released in a year and made two of his masterpieces, Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) back to back but still, it’s nothing short of a miracle to think that Coppola, who barely made it through being fired from the set of The Godfather, managed to write and direct this underrated gem.
It was thanks to the huge commercial and critical success of The Godfather and the Oscars that followed shortly after, that Coppola made an offer that the Paramount executives couldn’t refuse: if they want him to make Godfather II, they should let him make The Conversation first.
Unlike The Godfathers, the film was a small indie by the standards of the day (and even today) with limited locations and cast, but anything but small in its artistic vision and ambition.
At first, it might strike you with its politically charged theme of surveillance of the citizens, reflecting the collective distrust and paranoia in ‘70s America, which later dominated American movies. Yet, it was far ahead of the game, as films such as Marathon Man, All the President’s Men and many other seventies cult classics only came after it. It’s also a chilling coincidence that the film was made and released before/during the Watergate investigations and way before Nixon’s official resignation because of the scandal.
Today, the film still stands the test of time due to its masterful formalistic qualities: a paranoid tone and atmosphere mainly achieved through Coppola’s stylistic choices influenced by European modern cinema and specifically Antonioni’s masterpiece, Blow-Up (1966).
The film remains a prime example of a de-familiarising use of sound in cinema history. This strategy is not taken merely as an experimental choice but also cleverly to reflect the sonic perspective of the film’s protagonist and manages to create a unique subjective experience. The Conversation uses sound to change our perception of the images and gradually lets the audience into the mind of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman in a career-high delicate performance), a lone wolf surveillance expert. Harry emphasises in the opening that he doesn’t care what the subjects of his surveillance are talking about, but rather, all he wants ‘is a nice fat recording’. But, as the film progresses, he becomes obsessed with the subject of a particular conversation and embarks on a paranoid search for truth. The more he searches for the truth, the more ambiguous and fleeting it seems to be. This creates an ongoing suspense that escalates by the climax, leading to a great twist in the plot. But more importantly, Coppola manages to put the audience in Harry’s mind and ears and as the film comes to an end, it makes the audience question how we associate sound and images and derive information and meaning from them.
Let’s see what patterns and methods Coppola used to achieve this unique experience: repetition is one of the key formalistic elements that comes with the job of the main character and becomes a motif in the film. The Conversation opens with a long zoom shot, where we gradually understand that a couple is under surveillance and being recorded by a team of Harry’s surveillance experts. We see the same scene from multiple angles, we hear the same recording from different sources of recordings/sonic perspectives, and we later see Harry’s recollection of the recording as he plays it back and forth and tries to put the pieces together.
Disorientation is another formalistic choice in the film that is achieved specifically through the film’s cleverly designed soundtrack. From the opening sequence, the film’s editing makes us work to locate the sources of the sounds, playing with the audience’s perception of what they hear and where it’s coming from. To heighten the audience’s sensitivity to sound, the musical soundtrack is scarce throughout, and apart from a minimalistic piano theme, the film relies heavily on diegetic sounds and music. It then gradually merges the ambient sound with Harry’s mental sound when his obsession intensifies, and he keeps reviewing the recording in his mind (watch the ‘night bus ride’ scene closely as a remarkable example in the film where we share the paranoia that he’s going through).
The film is also a masterclass in visual style and storytelling: there’s a significant pattern standing out in the blocking and staging of the shots; the protagonist is often backlit, which makes him look like a shadow or a ghost surrounded by diagonal or perpendicular lines and harsh shadows that dominate him in the frame. The shots are organically thought of in the mise-en-scene, mostly through a combination of Coppola’s creative blocking, staging, a monotonous set design, and low-key lighting. This creates a striking visual motif that makes the audience feel that the protagonist is trapped in a cold and threatening world, way before he’s told via a telephone call at the finale that he’s under surveillance literally. It seems easy to point out but it’s also surprising how it doesn’t feel forced as you watch the shots in the film.
There’s also a Kafkaesque tone in the film due to the ambiguous nature of the organisations and the assignments that characters are given, which again is emphasised through Coppola’s scarce soundtrack and vast empty spaces in his long shots. A great example of his visual storytelling and ingenious blocking is when Harry, the protagonist is being questioned by his rival about his technique on a famous assignment that he did years ago. What could have been a simple line of dialogue becomes a memorable cinematic moment, Harry moving (very casually) behind a piece of matte glass where his figure is obscured from his rival and the audience, and only then he says: ‘Well, nobody really knows for sure!’
Great films age well, and it’s no wonder that The Conversation feels more relevant than ever in today’s world of CCTVs, face recognition cameras, smartphones, and social media.
Ali Mozaffari is a Melbourne based emerging filmmaker, freelance film critic and full time cinema buff and art enthusiast. He finished a Foundation Film & TV course at VCA in 2018 and been making short films and video essays ever since and often muses on the cinematic form and write on it.
Source link
#Conversation #Masterclass #Style #FilmInk