Sound: The murder of Sollozzo and McCluskey - The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) /Â Text: Excerpt from âSound Doctrine: An Interview with Walter Murchâ by Michael Jarrett
That example of the elevated train in Godfather is something thatâs primarily an emotional cue. Thereâs rhythm to it but only to a certain extent, and story-wise itâs a little ambiguous. "What is that sound? What is it doing in the film?" Thereâs not an easy answer to that. But emotionally you absolutely understand what that sound is there for. You understand it in a subconscious way, but it provokes the audience, partly by virtue of its mystery. Itâs a mysterious sound that is nibbling away at their subconscious, and people, being people, like to resolve things in some way. So subconsciously they will say, "What is that sound?" Because thereâs nothing in the picture that is anything like a trainâalthough itâs reasonable that a train might be heard in that part of the Bronxâthe emotion that comes along with that sound, which is a screeching effect as a train turns a difficult corner, gets immediately applied to Michaelâs state of mind. Here is a person who is also screeching as he turns a difficult corner. This is the first time he is going to kill somebody face to face. Heâs doing what he said he would never do. He wanted not to be part of the family, and now heâs overcompensating. Heâs doing what he alone can do for the family.
Do you recall how you came up with that idea?
Francis [Coppola] wanted to not have any music in that scene. He wanted the music to come in after the murder was over, after Michael had dropped the gun the way Clemenza told him to do it. Only at that moment would these big operatic chords come in. He felt that, if he had music earlier, it would dilute the effect of the music. He was quite right. Yet we looked at the scene and said, "You know, it just kind of sits there unless we have something. Well, letâs try some sound effects." It being the Bronx, and since I grew up in that part of New York, I rememberâagain, just like in American GraffitiâI remember those kinds of places always being close to elevated trains. So I came up with this idea of the screeching which I remembered from my youth as being a provocative kind of sound. We did a testâtried it, and it worked. So it went in the film.
Basically, youâre saying that audiences should be able to work with sound in a manner similar to the way Eisenstein said they should be able to puzzle out the meaning of edited images.
Thatâs the key to all film for meâboth editorial and sound. You provoke the audience to complete a circle of which youâve only drawn a part. Each person being unique, they will complete that in their own way. When they have done that, the wonderful part of it is that they re-project that completion onto the film. They actually are seeing a film that they are, in part, creating: both in terms of juxtaposition of images and, then, juxtaposition of sound versus image and, then, image following sound, and all kinds of those variations.
I always try to be metaphoric as much as I can and not to be literal. When youâre presented with something that doesnât quite resolve on a normal level, thatâs what makes the audience go deeper. Again, that train screech in Godfather is a good example. It doesnât make any sense from what youâre looking at. You havenât been shown a train anywhere in the neighborhood. The loudness with which you hear it is too loud. Even if you were in a restaurant right under an elevated train, it wouldnât quite be that loud. So the audience is presented with a discontinuity. Theyâre looking at very still images, close-ups of people talking in a foreign language, and yet theyâre hearing something completely different. That forces them to say, "What is that? What could that be?" Again, not consciously but subconsciously. And, as a result, they come up with a feeling about Michaelâs state of mind, and then they re-project that feeling onto his face. And in addition to what Al Pacino was doing, thereâs this whole other dimension that gets added to that.
So though you work metaphorically, you employ sounds that have a plausible origin in the filmâs world.
Yes. If you stretch it too far, it just becomes absurd. You havenât given the audience enough of the circle to know whether itâs a circle or not.
That leads to the question of determining the line between metaphor and catachresisâthe absurd image.
You have to use intuition and trust your instincts. At a certain point thereâs nothing else to guide you. And then, also, try stuff out. Donât be afraid. What Iâve always found, consistently, is that you can go much further than you think you can. So if you just think about it, you would hold yourself back, but if you actually do it and look at it and see what the effect is, you realize, "Oh yes, this is great. I think I can go even more with it." So you keep on going with ideas and with approaches until you sense, "Oops, thatâs too far." And again, who is there to tell you youâve gone too far? I donât know. It's just you and your relationship to the work. So itâs a combination of faith, that something like this will work. Itâs an experiment to prove, as much as you can prove, what the edges of this world are. When youâve gone too far, you hopefully will realize it.
* full text at http://www2.yk.psu.edu/~jmj3/murchfq.htm
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