Ascoltare un film. Significato ed esperienza del suono ne "La conversazione" di Francis Ford Coppola

Far from being an additional factor of an essentially visual form of narrative, film sound is a constitutive element of cinematic storytelling. In particular, cinematic sound design is crucial to the management of the audiences’ affective dispositions, and therefore of the ways a film invites viewers to assign meanings and values to the ongoing fictional situations. This chapter, by addressing the case of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, takes into account different ways in which sound produces meaning in audiovisual storytelling, and pays particular attention to the affective and embodied dimension of cinematic experience. From such a perspective, concerned with the ‘felt’ sound as well as the identification of sources or acoustic-perceptual qualities, the issue of listening becomes crucial to understanding how narrative worlds unfold and events take on specific features and paces during film viewing. Ultimately, focusing on filmic listening entails emphasizing stories as lived experiences, and experientiality as the core of cinematic narrative.