Classic Film Analysis

        For the build up to the murder scene, Walter Murch left out the musical score entirely. The only sounds heard are minimal, for example Caul's shuffling of the room ley in his palms, the opening and closing of the hotel room door and two flushes of the toilet as Caul's setting up his listening device - high-tech surveillance equipment, he calls it, which he builds himself, mind you. In doing so, the audience is kept anxiously waiting to see what exactly is to happen next.

       The actual score for this scene is heard when Harry Caul steps out on to the terrace and is met with a woman's horrific scream then almost simultaneously observes, through frosted glass, something heinous taking place in the next room, possible the murder. The score makes the audience feel as though they are watching a horror movie. For some reason, it also reminded me of Psycho's shower scene music - the high-pitched piercing piercing cry sounds and a repeated bell pinding almost simulating a heart beat. Afterwards, Caul turns on the tv, and the background music is now television noise, cartoon sounds, to be exact. Here the audience notices a segue, as the shriek-like musical score dissolves allowing the Flintstones background music to assert itself. 

         The Psycho-like score is heard once again when Caul, in Room 773, flushes the toilet. After he's able to calm himself down, he breaks into Room 773, expecting to find a crime scene, only to discover the room to be spick and span, with no remote sign whatsoever pointing to anyone ever being inside, except ofcourse, the blood that pours out of the toilet after he flushes it. The overwhelming cacophony of sound that plays in the "bloody toilet" scene hints at the murder not exactly being real, only a figment of Harry Caul's imagination.

         The tone this score sets for the scene is unlike other murder scores in other works e.g. TV shows like CSI or Criminal Minds. David Shire's composition takes out the serious tone, the grimness that usually envelops a typical murder scene. Instead, the score brings out the torturous psychological effect the murder itself has on Caul. It is important to note that, the audience never actually sees a murder take place. The entire movie is set to Caul's perspective. Therefore the score also makes one pause and think about whether or not someone was actually killed in Room 773, or whether the intensity of the whole scene was all a fabrication of Caul's acutely paranoid mind, brought out by his intense fear of not having a repeat of what happened back in San Francisco as a result of his job. 

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