Essay: The Conversation

(Coppola, 1974)

Screen LanguageFilm Foundation Degree

Essay 2000 words – 40%24 April, 2015

Choose 1 question:

In what ways, and to what ends, does The Conversation (dir. Coppola, 1974) depict a surveillance society?

Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting them

In what ways, and to what ends, does American Graffiti (dir. Lucas, 1973) depict teen experience?

What are you being asked to do?

How are the various formal techniques being used to depict a surveillance society/teen experience?

What are the filmmakers saying about a surveillance society/teen experience via the various formal techniques?

Your answer should identify and discuss, with precision and accuracy, relevant formal and narrative techniques. It should be constructed as a piece of critical analysis which should offer objective, well founded and argued insights into the roles these techniques play in the creation of meaning.

Up to you which techniques you focus on (obviously choose the most relevant and illustrative ones!

Remember the Learning Outcomes: The Essay will serve to develop students’ writing, analytical, critical and research skills, as well as the ability to construct an argument.

ReminderEssays should be formatted and presented exactly in line with the conventions set out in the BA Film Studies Writing Guidelines remember these offer clear and easy to follow Guidelines on:

writing answering the question structuring your work supporting your argument Film Studies formatting conventions referencing Filmography & Bibliography presenting and submitting your work

Who is Francis Ford Coppola?

"One of America's most erratic, energetic and controversial filmmakers"

Francis Ford Coppola (two ‘p’s,

one ‘l’)

The Godfather of New Hollywood

One of the highest-grossing movies in history

Apocalypse Now: epitome of

Coppola’s excess

Trailer

http://youtu.be/IkrhkUeDCdQ

• Inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "a comedy and a terrifying psychological horror story".

• Coppola said that he wanted to take the audience "through an unprecedented experience of war and have them react as much as those who had gone through the war".

Excess in Apocalypse Now

visual & sound tracks production values

Antithesis of excess: Coppola at his more

restrained/minimalistic

The Conversation (1974)

The Conversation (1974) Slowly-gripping, bleak study of electronic surveillance

and threat of new technologies Examined by loner Harry Caul, an invader of privacy,

the best in the business. He can record any conversation between two people anywhere. So far, three people are dead because of him.

Low-budget Released before and during the Watergate scandal (and

between the two Godfather films) - a time of heightened concern over the violation of civil liberties.

Claustrophobic themes of the destruction of privacy, alienation, guilt, voyeurism, justified paranoia, unprincipled corporate power

A few things to think on:

film as commentary on privacy/surveillance society

theme of voyeurism formal

experimentation ambiguity of sound,

specifically dialogue

Music: a few things to think on….

connotations of jazz? minimalist score?

music: a few things to think on….

solitary piano? emotional affect of music?

Minimalism in The Conversation

Questioning of dominant Hollywood aesthetic/values:

Lacks an appealing, in control protagonist Slow, meticulous narrative About ideas, rather than actions About cinematic technique, as much as

narrative experimentation with sound

hidden camera

unsettling feeling of being watched