>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!
>
>************
>Kristine J. Butler
>Department of French and Italian
>University of Minnesota
>
 
One that comes immediately to mind is Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST. On
the tarmac of a Chicago airport "The Professor" (Leo G. Carroll) begins to
explain the details of the mystery behind Roger Thornhill's (Cary Grant)
predicament; the Chicago-to-Rapid City plane, in the background, begins to
throttle up; and suddenly this lively (and long) conversation is completely
obliterated by engine noise.
 
I seem to recall that Hitchcock disowned the notion that this was done to
prolong the mystery for the audience, or to heighten dramatic tension.
Apparently, he and his scriptwriter Ernest Lehman could think of no
plausible way to explain why a government agency would willingly strand an
innocent person in harm's way (a less cynical time, the 50s) -- so they
just avoided it altogether.
 
 
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            Dana Bonstrom
   Director, New Media Initiative
========THE FILM STUDY CENTER========
         Harvard University
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tel 617.496.2714     fax 617.495.8197
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