The sound treatment of the man’s voice is unusual: although we do not see the man (the initial source of the voice), only the telephone (the terminal source), his voice has not been altered as is usually the case for an on-the-air voice. The voice has been recorded with a reverb, giving the impression that the speaker is present in the apartment, offscreen.
Thus, what we hear is not the man’s voice reproduced over the phone but his voice directly. Yet, the misunderstanding is even greater than it would have been with a bad line. The presumably dramatic break-up of the love affair is given a burlesque treatment: although the phone is a tool for communication, it is shown as a machine that skews understanding.
