How on Earth did the wife and her lover disguise the director's (Duvall's) death as an "automobile accident" (as the headline claims)? He was strangled and stabbed, so even if his body were stuffed into a car and run off the road, an autopsy would have revealed his mode of death.
shareObviously they're important enough that they can get away with murder somehow.
shareI struggle a bit with this part of the story. Saying that they were just so powerful they could magic some sort of explanation or law enforcement/justice cover-up is unsatisfying (although there is a government guy at Caul's office party, but... meh).
Could it be that Caul imagines the bloody violence in the hotel room, that would explain the blood from the toilet seeming a bit unrealistic, and that they somehow manage to instead just take control of Richard the Director ply him with drink and tamper with his car... it seems far-fetched. Wonder if there were breathalysers back then...
Also tried to take into account that forensic standards would be pretty cruddy compared to now but that doesn't work as an excuse much.
I suppose the car could have been rigged to explode so that the wounds weren't detectible after the burns and he wasn't really strangled to death and the shot that depicts The Director in a plastic bag was imagined. But feel like I'm overreaching with that implausible theory too.
I further suppose it is possible depending on the type of collision that the severs to the body, and this is pre-airbag days, could obscure the ones that were the true cause...
Nah, however one looks at it, it just seems an incongruous idea to turn a very planned stabbing / strangulation into a faked car accident. Unless there was no stabbing, strangulation and that was just Caul's, by now heavily deranged, delusion induced by the guilt of the deaths in New York. Or San Fran PD are absurdly corrupt and fully in the pocket of the Company.
Or could a 1970's coroner conceivably confuse a stab wound for an impaling shard of wreckage? The suffocation aspect wouldn't be apparent from any bruises I don't think. But then how on earth would one engineer a crash in such a way? Is it enough resolution to say that their murder cover up idea is simply an awful one soon to fall apart even without Caul's getting any more involved.
Or maybe they only need to avert suspicion long enough to get out of the country maybe Ann is flicking through overseas brochures in that car..?
Didn't feel like the conspirators in Director's death were likely going to get away with it anyway, the press were already strongly suspecting foul play in their questions...
I couldn't tell from the quick snatch of newspaper. Was the director being driven by a chauffeur, or was he (supposedly) driving himself?
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
Consider this:
Harry did indeed overhear the commotion in the room next to his, but imagined the part about the bloody hand and the overflowing toilet. How else to explain how it was covered up so neatly? If The Director's wife had connections that powerful, why use Harry at all? Why such an elaborate setup when they could have just killed him at any time and made it look like a car wreck? My theory is The Director did indeed confront his wife in the hotel but there was no murder; he simply left and, as a result of his anger, died in a car wreck. Remember, Harry was becoming more and more paranoid and even slept (!) after seeing the handprint. At this point in the movie, he was clearly mad.
As for the phone call at the end, it could have been Harry's imagination again, or Harrison Ford warning him not to expose the affair (and not the murder, which only took place in Harry's mind). The replay of the saxophone could have been another hallucination. This explains why Harry couldn't find the device at the end.
Just a theory.