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| "The Devil Keep Us under Surveillance" |
SUMMARY |
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The starting point of this detailed analysis of Francis Coppola's The Conversation, 1974, has been to intuitively determine the film's smallest unit as its integral multiple which repeats itself throughout the film in different configurations. The beginning of the film constitutes such a molecule - from the moment Hackman's surveillance expert painstakingly pieces together an intimate conversation between two lovers with the use of a very sophisticated equipment, to the scene of his intimate saxophone recital; this, also being a full exposition of the projected feature.
The procedure for the selection of the molecule allows us to reveal a basic ideological opposition in the film, which is a conflict in the sphere of cognition pivoted on the experience of scientific and technical cognizance and a simple moral code to guide intuition and feeling. The conflict between the two acts of cognition together with their illusory nature make up another dimension to the identity of the main character.
The procedure of the molecule in the analysis makes it possible to establish the basic structural principle of the film. The director makes a distinctive use of the counterpoint of sound and image. The analysis of the sound-image relationships in consecutive scenes in the film permits finding the basis of the rhythm of narrating, in which the verbal dominant constantly changes from image to sound, and within the sound - from the text to music, from music to the effects.
The analysis reveals the manner in which Coppola makes an audiovisual synthesis which distinguishes cinematography from among some other forms of art.
The audiovisual synthesis obtained by Coppola in The Conversation is, in the author's opinion, a perfect example of the cinema in which form is inseparable from the main idea of the film, and what is more the book proves that the idea contained in the film has only been realized through from which tends to reinforce the meaning and indirectly conveys the message. The author of the monograph tries to convince us that it is not the them that constitutes the idea, but the style. And is through his style Francis Coppola manages to convey an age-long cultural metaphor on an eternal matter of cognition.
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