Walter Murch & The Conversation

“Nothing is as fascinating as spending hours listening to Walter’s theories of life and cinema and his countless tidbits of wisdom, which he leaves behind him like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of bread.” -Francis Ford Coppola

Beatrice Murch. Photohgraph of Murch in Buenos Ares, Argentina, 2008

Francis Ford Coppola has stated that the subject of The Conversation is “the technology behind sound reproduction” (Turner 5). As valid and true as that may be, there are far more other subjects at play in the film that need addressing. The sound is extremely important in the film but the way that sound and visuals combined are repeated and distorted throughout the course of the story is what makes The Conversation a psychological thriller. Repetition of the same recordings and the same scene build the audience’s interest and anticipation while simultaneously revealing more about the characters and adding new meanings to the lover’s conversation. The decisions Walter Murch made as the supervising editor and sound designer on The Conversation enhanced the film’s level of artistry, gave background into the life of the main character, commanded the audience’s attention, and made the narrative story more dynamic.

Walter Murch is a name in the film editing world that has become synonymous with greatness. In an interview discussing his contribution to The Conversation, Murch said "When I'm first putting the images together--creating the first assembly of a film--I turn off all the sound, even for dialog scenes." (Kenny). He chooses to edit with the sound off initially to “extract meaning, greater meaning, out of them [the footage] because of  a sensory deprivation. But also, paradoxically, I pay more attention to the sound...I’m still hearing sound; it’s just that I’m hearing the sound in my imagination, the way it might finally be.” (Kenny).

Because The Conversation was in post-production during the production of The Godfather II, a set that commanded Coppola’s attention; Walter Murch had a fair amount of free range with the editing of the film (Ondaatje 38). In an interview discussing his collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola on The Conversation, Murch explained "He chose to shoot them [the scenes], and in ninety-nine percent of the cases I chose to use them deliberately- I recognized their power and put them in the order you see in the finished film" (Ondaatje 39). The Conversation is a cautionary tale about the ways a man’s personal psyche can misinterpret or assign new meaning to reality. Caul is fixated on the fact that his work lead to someone’s death and cannot separate that instance with his current case. Hired by a mysterious director of a large corporation to spy on his wife, the film opens with the initial recording of the couple as they walk around Union Square. The opening shot is a beautiful extreme long tracking shot with muffled singing, instruments, and a digitized sound effect overlaying. At first it is difficult to tell who the film is about and what is and is not diegetic sound. Once it cuts to the man at the window with the sound equipment, the audience is able to understand this is a story about surveillance and the tracking shot is from the point of view of the surveyor.

The audio in the film “woke many people up to the power of sound in film,” and not just because the main character is a sound recordist (Kenny). Murch admitted he liked the sound but did not think his approach was any different than his previous work. “In other films the meaning is still there, but the mind is blinded by the presence of dialog. It doesn’t mean the sound effects aren’t having their effect though, it’s just a more subconscious effect” stated Murch about the film’s appraisal for its sound design (Kenny). Although Murch was being modest, his point was that the editing in The Conversation intentionally made the audience acutely aware of what they were hearing. The attention to sound particularly effectively places the audience in the mind of Harry Caul.

There are several reasons why Murch would want sound design to be more prominent in the feature than other films. The main character is a sound man with a fixation on the medium, the repetition of phrases creates new meaning each time, but the most important reason for making sound obvious is because the audience always sees things from Harry Caul’s point of view. “Films with a single point of view are on borrowed time if they are more than two hours long. Since there’s only one point of view, there’s no relief if the audience is not one hundred percent with the film, and it can seem too long even if it isn’t objectively so.” Walter Murch said about The Conversation in regards to its difficulty to edit (Ondaatje 86). The film is restricted to Mr. Caul’s subjective view. The audience uncovers the plot in unison with the character; therefore, it is imperative for the audience to fully see and hear everything the way the character does. Viewing becomes a submersive experience laced with intertextuality. It is important to note that although the audience sees things through Caul’s eyes, Caul himself is not a reliable narrator. The viewer cannot take all the events in the film as the absolute truth which is evident in the second part of the feature.

“Where the classic cinema involves the spectator in the text by means of a continual ective point of appropriation of her or his look by the characters on the screen, The Conversation undercuts the involvement by establishing nontraditional relationships between images and sound.” (Turner 4). Throughout the first half of the film, the visuals on screen and the sound directly correspond with each other but we see an interesting shift in the editing style in the second half of the feature. There isn’t really dialogue in the second part besides the occasional exclamation being shouted at Mr. Caul. The nature of editing in the second half magnifies Caul’s fragile emotional state while putting increasingly more importance on his recording.

One of the most important lines of dialogue in the film is “He’d kill us if he had the chance.” (Coppola). The inflection and enunciation of the word “us” can drastically change the meaning of the sentence. The line of dialogue is not uncovered in the initial recording of the conversation. Caul replays it over and over in an attempt to pick it apart contextually. The newly developed clarity of the phrase is what drove Caul to respond emotionally to what was being said instead of just trying to record it in an analytical way. The phrase is repeated again when Harry goes to the corporation where he saw the couple he recorded and learned the girl’s father had died. Suddenly the phrase becomes a great revelation to both Harry and the audience that the couple killed the father. The people he was trying to protect ended up being the real threat. “The error committed by Harry Caul was to fail to understand the position of the speaker, or enunciator, of his tell-tale tape” (Turner 12).

Timing and the use of repetition are among the most important aspects of editing in the feature. Murch was able to literally tell the audience what to feel and reveal the plot twist almost entirely through the redundancy of the conversation. Certain motifs in the sound and imagery re-occur throughout the movie that serve to make the film more compelling and to create sympathy for the main character. The conversation itself is clearly the most important motif, continuously adding information and revealing Harry’s obsession with this particular case. There is also the saxophone, the auditory symbol of Caul’s escapism from his drab life. The lack of noise in Harry’s apartment outlines the character’s intense need for solitude and privacy while revealing his inner emptiness. The corresponding lack of decor or color on his walls visually backs up what the lack of sound suggests: he is vacant, living an empty life.

The techniques used to imply Harry’s potential hallucinations include a heavy layering of both diegetic imagery and non diegetic sound combined with the sound effects the audience hears to be embedded in the misé en scene. For instance in the hotel scene, as the camera pans in on Harry sitting on the bathroom floor eavesdropping on the man who hired him initially and his wife; the woman whom Harry believes to be in danger, their conversation becomes louder as the camera zooms in. The fight reaches a height of clarity about half-way through the camera movement and as the intensity of their fighting increases during the minute-long push in, new familiar digitized sounds emerge. As the camera gets closer and closer to Harry’s face, the audio becomes more muffled; louder but more unclear, and the digital production of the sound becomes more obvious until the moment he hears the scratch track and a clip of the woman’s voice he previously recorded. All of these cues guide the audience’s understanding of Caul’s psychological state over his moral dilemma; however, it is up to the viewer to interpret whether the editing is used to convey his obsession with the case or whether it is used to highlight his descent into madness.

Regardless of what was on screen, the audience was constantly reminded of the themes of surveillance and a lack of security. There are times when we watch the couple walking through the square and are reminded the viewing experience is unlike that of a more typical movie format when we are taken out of the scene by factors like Caul’s assistant saying “What a stupid conversation” (The Conversation). The same effect is used to make the audience question Harry’s mental state when his image is on screen while the lover’s dialog plays on top. When this is happening, we are able to see Harry’s discomfort and are virtually taken on a tour of his thought processes; his obsession, his lack of clarity, his self-appointed moral obligation to protect these strangers.  Unlike most films audiences see today, The Conversation deliberately breaks the mold of the traditional linear story line edited for continuity purposes.

Murch uses a technique called L-cutting quite a lot in this film to blend scenes together by introducing the audio of the following scene while the visuals of the scene before are still on screen or by letting the audio from the previous scene linger onto the next. While his assistant is working beside Caul who is attempting to decode the conversation, the assistant interjects “What the hell are they talking about for Christ’s sakes?” while the camera is still tracking the couple through the crowd (The Conversation). The following shot is of Caul and the assistant in their editing bay continuing their own conversation while rewinding that of the lover’s. L-cutting is often used to seamlessly lead one scene into another without the audience noticing but Murch used it to achieve the opposite effect.

“The Conversation is difficult to read because it codes itself in the manner of the classic detective film, but refuses the closure usually associated with the genre.” (Turner 7). The audience does not get the satisfaction of a definitive type of closure with The Conversation. A lot of the events are left unclear or unresolved. The audience is left to piece together what aspects of the feature are true and which are invented by Harry Caul subconsciously. We know Harry hallucinated the young woman’s murder at the hotel when she is alive later on but the details are left in the open. The audience does not know the true extent of the husband and wife’s fight or even if the fight existed at all. The reality of the visual cue of her smeared bloody handprint is also left up for debate. What is even less clear is the very end when Harry is playing saxophone after trashing his apartment trying to find planted audio surveillance. He received a phone call saying he was being watched but could not find the device anywhere. It is possible that Harry’s paranoia was getting the best of him, driving him insane. The only item he did not tear apart or break down was his saxophone so it is also possible his instrument was bugged. As viewers we are misguided throughout the film because we see everything through Harry’s eyes. The audience is lead to believe that Harry is right and that the lovers he recorded are in danger until the reveal in the end.  The final shot pans back and forth, mimicking the way surveillance cameras move. The meaning that can be extracted is applicable to the couple, Harry, and the audience: We are all being watched. The ambiguity of the ending forces the viewer to question their own security and role in society in an age of technological advancements. The viewers are still left with questions like “What is real?,” “What is moral?,” and most importantly “What would I have done in Harry Caul’s shoes?”

By breaking the mold of traditional moving and sound picture relationships, Francis Ford Coppola with a great amount of influence and input by Walter Murch were able to turn a five minute conversation into a dynamic, exciting, and suspenseful feature film with a clear yet intriguing narrative. Each repeated phrase or image uncovered a new meaning or layer to the film that drove the plotline along, revealed character traits, or gave the audience background into the world of the main character. Not only repetition could be applied; however, to merge the character’s imagination with memories and factual information. In order for the ending to remain open ended the way that it is; a major aspect to the success of the film throughout the decades, the editing needed to be obvious, fresh, and unique. If The Conversation had not been edited by Walter Murch, the narration could have been less ambiguous and therefore less dynamic or engaging. Without the technical aspects of editing such as sound design, repetition, and the interesting combination of different diegetic and nondiegetic elements, it is safe to say The Conversation would not be the final movie we see on screen today.

Works Cited

Kenny, Tom. "Walter Murch - the Search for Order in Sound & Picture."Walter Murch - the Search for Order in Sound & Picture. FilmSound.org, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.

Ondaatje, Michael, and Walter Murch. The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2002. Print.

The Conversation. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Perf. Gene Hackman. Paramount Pictures, 1974. Film.

Turner, Dennis. “The Subject of "the Conversation"”. Cinema Journal 24.4 (1985): 4–22. Web…