In The Conversation, the main sets in the film represent the masculine impairment of the main character in the movie, by the name of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman). Harry’s apartment and Harry’s office represent the same aspects of Harry’s character, which is his constant need to hide because of his paranoia in relation to his privacy. Because Harry works in surveillance, he is aware of how easy it is to spy on someone, hence his constant paranoia. This is first apparent when Harry enters his apartment for the first time. There are many different locks on his door which is an indication of the paranoia that this person feels. Once Harry sees the wine bottle in his apartment he is noticeably upset by what he has found. The reason for why is very easily apparent besides the logical reason that Harry had the only key to the apartment. Nothing in Harry’s apartment appears to have any personal value or liveliness of any kind, which is why that wine bottle is so startling to Harry and throws him off.
The apartment itself is very grey and monotone; the architecture is very basic and the wall paint is itself grey. This clearly represents Harry’s masculine impairment; his not being able to get in emotional contact or to have any kind of relationship with anyone because of his need for privacy, and also because he has to not be emotionally involved in the people that he’s recording’s personal business for fear that his emotions will get in the way of his judgments regarding how he should handle each case that he is given. He simply has to record conversations, and that is all. He can’t have any interest in what the meanings of those conversations actually are. Harry’s derelict monotone apartment represents how he emotes to other people in relation to his job; basically his apartment represents what he has to lose in the process of being a proficient conversation recorder and that’s no more apparent than in the line that Harry says to the man that gave him the bottle of wine: “I would be perfectly happy to have all my personal things burned up in the fire, because I don’t have anything personal. Nothing of value. No, nothing personal except my keys you see.”
Harry seems content in his loneliness, and in his empty apartment, and this is apparent because of the effortless way at the beginning of the film that he walks through his own personal space. Harry’s walking through his apartment are the only moments in the film really where Harry appears to be content with his life, most likely because he feels that he is living in complete privacy. The other space in the film, known as Harry’s office, is very different from Harry’s apartment in that it is a much larger and consequently more mysterious space. Yet, in some ways it is even more uninhabited than Harry’s apartment. All that is in the space is the equipment that Harry utilizes for his job occupation, which coincidentally enough are tools that are very mechanical and cold just like the space that the characters there are residing in. However, what Coppola brilliantly does as a director, particularly in the party scene, is he gives the space character and definition through the use of visual cues. The room, in a sense, gives the audience what they need in order to determine who Harry really is, and also why he is such a private individual. This is something that Harry’s apartment does not give the audience upon the initial first viewing of the space. The audience gets the fact that Harry can’t connect with anyone, but they are not given the reasons why until they enter the party scene. It’s ironic that in some ways Harry tries his hardest not to show any hints of his personality in the spaces that he inhabits, and yet, his personality is very apparent in these spaces.
Harry’s office is not only a representation of Harry’s personality, but it’s also a space that alerts the audience to Harry’s sordid past and to why he is the way he is. The space is also a representation of what transpires in this movie, which is ultimately the unraveling of Harry’s privacy. In this sense, it is the most important and dominant space in the whole film, which is probably why the most prominent scene in that space takes place in the middle of the film’s duration. It’s the key to the whole movie; once the audience has been there, they will never look at Harry or his apartment in the same way again.
In the first instances of the party scene, it’s merely presented to the audience that Harry is a very private man that needs to hide. This is apparent whenever he slips behind the translucent blue sheet situated in the office. Later, the audience learns why Harry has to hide behind objects. The No Admittance signs situated throughout the office are an aspect of the mise en scene that alerts the audience that Harry is a very private man. The space is big enough that Harry presumes he can hide, but this doesn’t prove to be the case. This feeling of the unraveling of Harry’s privacy slowly starts to materialize throughout the lengthy sequence. It begins when Meredith (Elizabeth McRae), the woman who ironically enough steals Harry’s recording of the conversation, who breaches Harry’s privacy, bangs her head on that metal object hanging from the office ceiling. That object, along with the round object that says turn off the lights, are both objects that act as intrusions in Harry’s space; they are in a sense impediments in the work place and they completely change the tone of the film to one of abruptness; or in other words a lack of calm. Calm is represented as the blue light seen in the distance of Harry’s office, and is also represented by the translucent blue sheet that Harry constantly hides behind. From then on Harry’s privacy is transgressed.
Meredith eventually moves Harry into the middle space of the office/warehouse, and Coppola’s camera follows the two characters past the gate that reads No Trespassing. Harry begins to open up to Meredith because he feels that he is safe and away from everyone else from the party, when ironically enough his whole conversation is being taped by Bernie Moran (Allen Garfield). This film, which is full of ironies, deals with a man that wants to stay emotionally detached from everyone, including mainly the people that he records. Ironically enough, he can’t do so because of the guilt that he feels for letting people that he recorded in the past die because of his wanting to stay out of trouble. This fact is eventually brought up by Bernie at the party. The visual cue that alerts the audience to this fact comes once Harry stops opening up to Meredith. The shot involves Stan (John Cazale) riding around the pole that Harry and Meredith are leaning on. His constant rotations around this circular object recalls Harry constantly rewinding the tape spool in order to get a better hearing of the conversation. The editor and sound designer on the film, “…Walter Murch commented that, ‘All the content of the film is being carried by the sound…with a construction based on repetition rather than exposition, like a piece of music’ (Spicer, 141). This rotating symbol is a reference to Harry’s obsession with the job that he is working on and how it ultimately unravels him. This is truly ironic, because it reveals in actual fact that Harry is a man obsessed with caring for the people that he records.
It’s revealed by Bernie that Harry’s recording of a conversation in the sixties ultimately resulted in a couple of murders. This is why Harry is such an evasive man. He doesn’t want anyone to know about his sordid past or about his Catholic guilt which will be alluded to later in this paper. Harry doesn’t want to be emotionally attached for fear that he will have feelings for the people that he harms by recording their conversations. Yet, its Harry’s Catholic guilt that makes him constantly emotionally attached to his victims, and this is what he doesn’t want to show to anyone. This is what ultimately makes Harry in his own eyes a bad bug man, and he doesn’t want to appear weak to anyone. Being paranoid because of his safety is not the only reason as for why Harry is such a private man. This is why whenever Bernie mentions Harry’s past, Harry hides behind that blue translucent sheet. Harry in a sense is afraid of Bernie because he might make him confess and Harry is dying to confess at this point in this film. Harry’s squirming and evasiveness is what makes the film and the sequence truly unnerving. When Harry hides in this scene, he becomes trapped by his own guilt. In a strange subversive post modernist sense, Bernie is Harry’s priest. There’s even a shot of Harry talking to Bernie behind the fence that acts as a confessional booth in that point in the film. This aspect of Harry’s character is what he tries to conceal by hiding behind his informally cold technology. Harry’s obsession with cleanliness, also an aspect of the Catholic culture, is evident by his constantly throwing away the garbage in his office at the party. Metaphorically, Harry always tries to cover up his mess and yet can’t seem to do so.
This is evident in Harry’s spotless informal apartment, where even the lamp shade is wrapped up in plastic. As stated before, we as the audience will never look at Harry or his apartment in the same way again, because now we know why he tried so hard to remain anonymous. This is reflected in the final disturbing scene of Coppola’s film. Opposed to the first scene in Harry’s apartment, this scene is different in many ways. The main difference is that objects in Harry’s apartment are now shot in close up, in order to convey that Harry does indeed have personal objects in his space. Especially in regards to the Madonna, which Harry tragically destroys because he believes that an electronic listening device is planted in the object. Other close ups are basically every other object in his apartment, including his telephone. The effortless way that Harry walks through his apartment eventually becomes dispelled, and by the end of the film Harry moves around in a more paranoid fashion in his apartment. It’s ironic because by the end of the film the audience really does learn that Harry doesn’t have any privacy, and that his paranoia was accurate and not unjustified. Even the long surveillance camera shots throughout the film disappear within the last sequence. The cutting becomes more rapid and threatening. The monotone lightening present in the earlier scenes has been replaced by moodier darker lightening, like the shot of Harry dismantling his light switch. This effective form of lighting represents the more tragic elements of Harry’s character. When originally the audience felt that Harry was a rather pathetic fellow, now the audience knows Harry’s reasons for why he is the way he is.
What’s revealed about Harry, which ultimately makes the apartment feel different by the end of the film, is that because of Harry’s Catholic guilt, he basically forces himself into isolation in order to atone for his sins. Harry’s apartment is in effect a jail cell. No wonder he has to sing the blues by playing his saxophone. The audience is more sympathetic to Harry than they were the first time they saw him in his apartment because he was so unreachable before, because they weren’t invited in. The audience feels more sympathy for Harry by the end of the film and ultimately understands the tragic nature of the man. This is because of Coppola’s close ups of the personal objects of Harry’s, that he won’t even admit are personal objects. Loneliness, in this film’s context arises out of Harry’s trying not to take anything personally; arises from his basic striving to be totally anonymous. Harry hopefully realizes the limitations of loneliness by the end of the film. The film is tragic because Harry finds this out too late, and all his personal objects are destroyed. Harry’s destroying of his apartment at the end of the film is a visual metaphor for the dismantling of his privacy. Harry can’t keep things neat and tidy anymore; he can’t cover up his past through the use of his privacy. The last shot is Harry’s stripping bare in order to reveal the truth about his nature; that he is a hollow and empty man. The Conversation is ultimately a minimalist film all about how minimalism, or the lack of anything personal being attached to oneself along with the lack of expressiveness on an individual’s part, can ultimately make one feel trapped.
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