Kristine Butler asks:

"Can anyone help me in thinking of movies in which a conversation or a human

voice is deliberately obstructed or drowned out by another sound, thus

frustrating the spectator's access to the voice or voices in question?

Godard does this in certain of his films, and I'm thinking that Hitchcock

has too (in that this is a clever way to build suspense).  Thanks in

advance!"

 

Hitchcock does indeed do this.  Note Thornhill/Cary Grant's first actual

meeting with "The Professor" (Leo G. Carroll) at the Chicago airport in

NORTH BY NORTHWEST.  As The Prof. begins to explain to Grant how he got caught

up by accident in a spy caper, his words are drowned out by the engines of

a plane getting ready to take off.  The point, though, is not really to build

suspense here--it's simply that the audience already knows what The Prof. is

telling Thornhill and his information would be redundant--thus, he's able to

relay a fairly complex amount of information (supposedly) in a very short

amount of screen time!  The noise dies down, though, when The Prof. reveals

something that neither Thornhill nor the audience knew (though we might have

suspected it)--that Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) is actually a double agent

working for The Prof.

 

On the other hand, consider Hitch's manipulation of sound in FRENZY.  When the

killer takes the protagonist's ("hero" is a word to be used only loosely in this

film) girlfriend to his flat, we know that he plan to kill her.  But as he

opens the door, the camera begins to track backwards, down the stairs, out

the door and across the street, so that the city noises completely obscure any

screams that might be coming from the apt.  Earlier, the killer's first attack

produced screams from his victim, but the film cuts to shots of people

(including some nuns) walking down the street and barely noticing the faint

noise.

 

 

Coppola's THE CONVERSATION (always a handy film to cite when dealing with sound)

is a bit more complex.  The initial conversation of the young people that

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) tapes is just a garble of phrases lost in ambient

noise and electronic signals.  Eventually, though, Harry screens out the

ambient sound and decodes the signals to produce a clear tape.  The real irony

of the film (at least in the prints I've used) is that the tapes are much

clearer than the actual onscreen, external diegetic voices of the characters.

In some scenes, you have to strain to hear the dialogue at all--but then it

may reappear in clearer form, on a tape!

 

 

Finally, this kind of device is fairly common in comedies before the end of the

Production Code, when a background sound might obscure a swear word or some

such thing.  In a fairly trivial (and totally sexist) 1962 film, BOYS NIGHT OUT,

three businessmen describe their sexual conquests to each other while commuting

into NYC on the train.  But each time, when they get to the "good stuff," a

passing train drowns out their words.  You might check out Frank Tashlin's

as well for similar effects.

 

Oh, yes, that reminds me too of Chuck Jones' classic Warner Bros. cartoon

ONE FROGGY EVENING.  A man discovers a singing frog and tries to market him,

but each time anyone besides the original man is within eyeshot of the frog,

he clams up.  A special point of auditory interest here is that we never hear

any human voice *except* the frog's.  Human voices will sometimes be obscured

the placement of the characters on the other side of a window and so forth.

 

 

Best of luck!

 

 

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)

 

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