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The conversation: a tape, a plastic wall, a bug, a saxophone

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13642520903515785

1470-1154

Sean Singer,

Cinema and Media Studies

Abstract I offer a discussion of an obscure film made more than 30 years ago, a film that has invisible hinges: on one side of the door The Conversation is a film about audio surveillance, audio recording, the private moments in public spaces that are heard and overheard. On the other side, it is about jazz, an amateur artist whose impulses struggle against his ordered, ordinary life. The film is about cameras, microphones, listening, and losing ground. It is about a person who salvages the moments of expression he has been desperate to repress. Keywords: jazzfilmsurveillancesecrecyparanoia Notes 1. Hackman's tenor saxophone was ghosted by Justin Gordon. The soundtrack includes Al Aarons or Bobby Bryant, trumpet, Don Menza, tenor sax, Barney Kessel, guitar, Pete Jolly, piano, Ray Brown, bass, and Shelley Manne, drums on Blues for Harry and Al Aaron, trumpet, Bud Shank, baritone sax, Ray Brown, bass, and Shelley Manne, drums on Love Bug. 2. The Conversation, written and directed by Coppola, was nominated for Best Picture in 1974 but lost to Coppola's other film that year, The Godfather Part II. 3. Murch started editing and mixing sound with Coppola's The Rain People (1969). 4. Antonioni's Blow-Up also begins and ends with scenes of mimes. 5. Harry Caul was modeled after Harry Haller, the protagonist in Hermann Hesse's 1927 novel Steppenwolf. Haller became Caller, then shortened to Call, but a secretary transcribing Coppola's notes misspelled it as Caul (discussed by Coppola in the DVD commentary). A caul is a part of the amnion sometimes covering a child's head at birth, deemed in antiquity to portend greatness. Because of its denotation of protection, the name serves as an appropriate metaphor for Hackman's character. Steppenwolf also features a saxophonist, Pablo. 6. Is Coppola's making an overt pun on his own role as the Director? 7. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960), Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) and The Passenger (1975), Michael Haneke's Caché (2005), and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others (2006) also deal with this subject in a range of ways. 8. ‘I've been involved in some work that I think will be used to hurt these two young people. It's happened to me before. People were hurt because of my work, and I'm afraid it could happen again and I'm … I was in no way responsible. I'm not responsible. For these and all my sins of my past life, I am heartily sorry.’ 9. ‘I have nothing of value, except my keys, which I would like to have the only copy of.’ (10:31). 10. When Adolphe Sax's patent expired in 1866, numerous saxophonists and instrument manufacturers implemented their own improvements to the design and keys. Presumably, when Caul is bugged at the end of the film, it is either by Moran or someone better than Moran. 11. Smoke machines for the dream sequence prompted residents to call the police, which caused reporters to arrive, all of whom kept interrupting the filming of this scene and Coppola gave up trying to get it. 12. Hackman and Duvall were apparently former roommates. This may be the only scene on film when they appear together. 13. Psycho similarly uses music to show the psychological state of the mind of surveillance when Lila Crane (Vera Miles) sees Beethoven's Eroica symphony on the gramophone; it is a silent record about a psychopathic personality, Napoleon Bonaparte. 14. The car was a gift to Coppola by Paramount; they were only willing to finance The Conversation because The Godfather (1972) was a success. 15. A newspaper headline reads: ‘Auto crash kills executive’ (1:43:35). 16. According to his DVD commentary, Coppola had to freeze the plastic so it would shatter better. 17. Such as Charlie Parker quoting ‘A pretty girl is like a melody’ during ‘Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid' on the 22 January 1949 performance at the Royal Roost when an actual pretty girl supposedly entered the room. 18. Hear Roland Kirk's astounding example of hermeneutic interpellation in his melody of Dvorak's Going Home and Les Brown's ‘Sentimental journey’ simultaneously (Does your House have Lions?) 19. In Nausea, Sartre (Citation1979, 21) describes how Roquentin first feels when he hears the old Pathé jazz record, played with a sapphire needle. He describes the notes as living as ephemerons, and then dying before the listener. It is almost sacrificial: ‘For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. They know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves. They race, they press forward, they strike me a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I would like to hold them between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even will it. I know few impressions stronger or more harsh’ (Sartre 1979, 21). 20. Hackman also plays the role by turns withdrawn and manic, as in the scene after the convention when Moran eggs him on to reveal his trade secrets. 21. ‘The voyeur is very careful to maintain a gulf, an empty space, between the object and the eye, the object and his own body: his look fastens the object at the right distance, as with those cinema spectators who take care to avoid being too close to or too far from the screen’ (Metz Citation1986, 60). 22. Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Krin Gabbard, Lewis Porter, Michael Jarrett, and David Rosenfeld for their attentive and thoughtful comments and ideas.