Diva 1981
A young man smuggles his Nagra reel-to-reel tape recorder into an opera theater and records an opera singer who does not want her performances recorded and has never been recorded before. The tape becomes mixed up with a cassette tape that is proof that a police chief is mixed up with the mob. The tape is also sought after by some foreign men who want to make a bootleg recording out of it to sell to the singer's fans.
Les vampires 1915 (Silent film serial of 10 mini episodes)
In Episode 7 "Satanas" Vampire Irma Vep poses as a woman who records local celebrity visitors using an old sound-recording device, which is unusual since this is a silent film. In a very elaborate scheme, she records a millionaires voice, using what the newspapers have reported is the only French phrase he knows. Another one of the Vampires also gets his signature, which they use to forge a check. When they present the check at a bank, the bank manager calls the millionaire on the telephone. Irma Vep has taken over the receptionist post at his hotel to hijack the call. When he calls, she plays the recording back to the manager through the telephone and the manager believes he is listening to the millionaire, so the Vampires are able to cash the check.
Upstream Color 2013
A man records sounds in nature and sounds he makes himself then turns them into music.
Café Lumière 2003
A bookstore employee records the sounds of trains in Tokyo with a mini disc recorder and a small handheld microphone.
Blow Out 1981
While he is recording sound effects outdoors with a parabolic mic for a movie, a sound recordist witnesses a car crash. Back in his studio, after he syncs the sound up to video of the car crash, he figures out that somebody shot out the car's tires and murdered the passengers.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 1970
A conversation recorded on a tapped phone contains a strange sound in the background. A sound lab analyzes it but they can't figure it out. The protagonist has a friend who is a bird expert. He hears the recording and realizes it's a bird so rare there is only one in all of Italy and it is at the Rome zoo. This detail leads them to the identity of a mass murderer.
Berberian Sound Studio 2012
In the 1970s, an English foley artist works in an Italian film studio recording voice and sound effects for a Giallo film.
Soundman 1998
Igby Walters records on-set dialog on his Nagra and he also uses a pocket mini-cassette recorder to record his director's promise to help him, which the director later tried to deny.
Mrs. Doubtfire 1993
Robin Williams dubs voices for cartoon characters in a recording studio. We also see some foley being recorded.
The Postman 1994
The Postman and his boss take Pablo Neruda's tape recorder outside to record sounds of the island, music, and a message to Neruda from the postman, which they plan to send to Neruda.
Brighton Rock 1948
Pinkie's new wife Rose asks him to go into a recording booth on the boardwalk to make a recording of his voice for her. He does, telling her that he knows she wants him to say "I love you" but instead can only tell her that he hates her. After he dies, she finally listens to the record, but it is scratched and skips after he says the words "I love you" and the movie ends with that phrase repeated again and again. (The book ends with her just about to listen to the recording, which presumably will not skip.)
Sudden Fear 1952
Playwright Joan Crawford uses an elaborate dictation system that uses multiple microphones set up around her office so she can walk around the room and dictate her plays and always be recorded clearly on one of the microphones. One day she uses it to dictate some changes to her will, but she leaves the room and forgets to turn it off. Her husband and his girlfriend come into the room shortly after she leaves and close the door so they can talk in private, while the machine is still recording. The next day Crawford listens to their conversation and learns that they plan to kill her. The dictation disc skips and the last thing we hear is Gloria Graham's voice saying "I know a way... I know a way" over and over again.
Lisbon Story 1994
A German sound engineer in Lisbon with a portable DAT recorder records sound effects and voices for a movie. He also records foley sounds in a studio.
The Conversation 1974
Gene Hackman is a surveillance professional who is hired to record a conversation between two people who are walking around in a crowded public square because they think that someone might be trying to record them. He uses a mic hidden in a bag held by a man who follows them around, a second long-distance directional mic in the window of a building on one side of the square, and a third even more long distance mic that looks like a sniper's rifle on the roof of a building across the other side of the square. He takes the three tape recordings, syncs them up, and uses the best parts of each recording to make a composite tape. Then he freaks out when he thinks the tape will be used to convince a man to murder his cheating wife.
The Lives of Others 2006
People are spied on and recorded by electronic surveillance devices in East Germany.
Three Colors: Red 1994
We hear some important telephone answering machine recordings.
Nixon 1995
Nixon blows it by recording his conversations then trying to erase parts of them.
Shoah 1985
The filmmaker uses illicit surveillance videotaping and sound recording from van parked outside his interview subjects. We wonder if what he is doing is unethical even though the subjects are ex-Nazis talking about the terrible things they did during the holocaust.
Brighton Rock 2010
This film uses the same exact scratched record skipping happy ending used in the 1947 movie, which was not part of the novel.
Zootopia 2016
Judy Hopps the bunny cop uses a tape recorder disguised as a carrot to record Nick Wilde the conman fox when he tells her about his criminal activity. Then she plays the recording back to him and threatens to use it to put him in jail unless he helps her. Later they use the recorder to record the mayor explaining her wrongdoings which leads to her getting arrested.
Pygmalion 1938
Henry Higgins molds a lower class girl Eliza Doolittle into an upper class aristocrat by changing the way she speaks. He records her voice on some type of discs and plays back the recordings to her in order to let her hear herself and improve.
My Fair Lady 1964
Henry Higgins is a phonetics professor who has several wax cylinder recorders that he uses to record people's speech and play it back to help them learn to change the way they speak. In one scene he plays several of the gramophones back simultaneously at high speed to act as the irritating sounds of a group of women talking.
Songcatcher 2000
A musicologist carries heavy Edison cylinder recorders into isolated mountain locations to record Appalachian mountain songs so she can introduce them to the rest of the world.
Public Enemies 2009
The Bureau of Investigation (the predecessor of the F.B.I.) uses machines that record sound to lacquer discs to record tapped phone calls. These recordings help them find John Dillinger.
Narc 2002
A cop turns on a micro cassette recorder to record a forced murder confession from two men he tortures and plans to kill after they confess. Before they can confess the cop's partner shoots him and forces him to confess that he was the real killer. But the dying cop tells the partner that he didn't shoot the man who shot himself in a suicide. The last shot in the movie is a close-up of the cassette recorder still recording, which made me assume that the truth about the suicide was recorded to tape and will be heard by others in the police department. Of course, there could be other interpretations.
Atomic Blonde 2017
In 1989 Berlin, Charlize Theron is a spy who hides a small tape recorder in her stockings with a microphone taped under her fancy lingerie and attached to her bra to record conversations with various spies. She finds a hidden microphone in her winter coat and realizes that she is being recorded by her corrupt colleague. Her superiors also record her every word with a large reel-to-reel recorder that is continually running in the background in the interrogation scene that frames the movie.
One False Move 1992
Killers enter a home where a man is making a home video on a VHS camera, which records them talking before they shut it off. Then they rob and kill several people. L. A. police isolate the sound in the background of the movie and hear someone say the name of the home town where one of the murderers is planning to go, which helps lead them to him.
Manhattan Murder Mystery 1993
A man is getting away with a perfect murder. A group of people want to make him give them information they can take to the police to convince them of his crime. They write a fake script for a theater play and call an actress who is involved with the murderer to audition for the play so they can get her to say certain phrases that they record on the video that is supposedly documenting her audition. They take the sound of her voice from the video and edit it into short phrases, each of which they put on tapes put into five tape recorders. They call the murderer on a speaker phone and press play on one of the five recorders to play back selected phrases in a conversation with him.
Thunderheart 1992
An FBI agent investigating a murder uses a handheld cassette recorder to secretly record a conversation that incriminates his boss. After the man who was recorded is murdered, the agent plays the tape back over his police radio to his boss who is chasing him in another vehicle, to let his boss know that he knows he's guilty.
The Two Jakes 1990
In 1948, private detectives use a wire recorder to record an adulterous affair in a motel room that turns into a gun homicide after the husband enters. The wire recording becomes a major story element in the movie. We hear it played several times, so when the recording is played as evidence in a courtroom, we can tell that important incriminating details have been removed.
Singin' in the Rain 1952
One of the best musicals ever made is also one of the best depictions of recording sound for film at the beginning of the talking picture era, including the invention of dubbing speaking and singing parts.
In a World... 2013
Recording voice overs for movie trailers.
Soundtracker 2010
Gordon Hempton records nature sounds and complains about airplane noise. Don't we all. It seems like he hopes to find a place so quiet that he can record the sound of silence. Wait, I think he just recorded the sound of one hand clapping....
Baby Driver 2017
Baby constantly listens to music on a variety of iPods, and he also makes cassette mixtapes from conversations and sounds he records on various vintage machines including a micro-cassette recorder, small electronic keyboards, digital drum pads, a dual cassette recorder, a reel-to-reel deck, an ancient mini synthesizer, and an old Califone educational recorder that records onto a magnetic strip on a card which can then be played and scratched like an LP.
Cold War 2018
In postwar Poland see some ethnomusicologists recording people in rural Poland singing traditional folk music with portable reel-to-reel tape recorders. They hire folksingers and create a huge national folklore ensemble to sing the songs.
River's End 2005
A county sheriff records himself on cassette tapes to teach his grandson survival tips for a canoe trip in the wilderness. The boy plays the tapes each day on a portable tape player as he makes his way down the river.
True Lies 1994
Secret agent Arnold Schwarzenegger has a French man record his voice onto a small tape recorder. Arnold obscures his face and hides the tape machine, then plays bay phrases on the tape recorder to his wife, who doesn't know her husband is the man across the hotel room because she hears another man's voice asking her to strip and do a sexy dance.
Jawbreaker 1999
Three high school mean girls accidentally kill the fourth member of their squad during a prank on her birthday due to a mistake by their leader Courtney. When they put the dead girl back in her bedroom Courtney unwittingly records herself confessing to the killing on a greeting card that records a short voice message and plays it back when the card is opened. Later, Courtney's now ex-friends discover the accidental incriminating voice message on the card and get revenge on her by wiring the card's voice recording chip into the PA system for the high school senior prom. Just as Courtney is on stage being crowned prom queen, her voice message starts playing repeatedly over the PA speakers for everyone to hear. The crowd recognizes Courtney's voice and turns against her, now knowing that she's a murderer.
Equus 1977
A psychiatrist gives his patient a portable cassette recorder to record things in private that he wants the doctor to listen to later without having to talk to the doctor in person.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 2019
Actor Rick Dalton rehearses his part by recording himself speaking the lines of other actors onto a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder, leaving enough silence for his own lines, then playing the tape back and speaking his lines during the silence.
Dillinger Is Dead 1969
Glauco gets in bed next to his wife, plugs a mic into a portable cassette recorder, and records the sounds of his wife's loud breathing as she sleeps. Then he plays it back. Later he puts pillows over her head and shoots her.
The Anderson Tapes 1971
There's a lot of surveillance recording in this movie: NY Narcotics cops are recording an ex-con druggie; the FBI is recording an antique dealer; the House Internal Committee is recording a Black Panther; the IRS is recording mobsters with a mic planted under a car, a mic strapped to a restaurant waiter's leg, and a pen microphone in a nurse's pocket which is recorded to a nearby boat; and Anderson's girlfriend's apartment is bugged and recorded by her sugar daddy. He plays back a recording of the couple in bed together to force her to be his exclusive mistress by blackmailing Anderson because he has overheard his plans to rob an apartment building. All of these people under surveillance are involved in Anderson's plans, and everyone bugging them has learned about the plans, but none of them does anything to stop the robbery because they aren't communicating with each other. The police don't find out about the caper until it's in progress. After Anderson's gang is caught or killed, all of the agencies erase their tapes to avoid embarrassment over failing to report the robbery or to avoid penalties for illegal surveillance.
Anna 2019
Anna secretly records a conversation she has with her KGB boss that she uses later to blackmail her boss.
I Lost My Body 2019
A boy is gifted a portable cassette player and a microphone. He records natural sounds as well as his parents talking, playing music, and driving in their car. The tape is recording when their car crashes, killing his parents. He plays the tape back when he is a young man, then he records the sounds of himself jumping off a roof onto a building crane, and the girl he loves finds it and plays it back.
Mississippi Mermaid 1969
Catherine Deneuve's character goes into a recording booth with a microphone to record a spoken message directly to a 7 inch vinyl disc that she takes away with her. Unfortunately, a speeding car makes her drop the disc on the street where it gets run over and broken, so her love message was never listened to by her husband.
The Evil Dead 1981
Five college students staying at a remote cabin find an archeologist's tape recorder. When they play back a reel-to-reel tape of incantations they inadvertently resurrect a demon. After more of the tape is played later they learn how to kill the demon.
Predestination 2014
The face of an agent, whose job is to time travel to stop crimes before they happen, is completely destroyed in an explosion. After reconstructive surgery and a long recovery, he has a new face and a new voice, because his vocal cords were also damaged. With his new identity he is able to travel back in time and meet and manipulate his past self without him knowing who he really is. He uses a small cassette recorder to record a message of advice for his past self and leaves it by his bed to listen to later.
Red Dragon 2002
The serial killer named The Tooth Fairy abducts a tabloid journalist who was forced to write nasty things about him by the F.B.I. He forces the journalist to tape record a message retracting what he wrote. We hear the tape played back after the journalist was set on fire and rolled down the road in a wheelchair to his newspaper's building.
Kalifornia 1993
Spoiler Alert
Brian, a writer working on a book about serial killers, takes a trip with his girlfriend and two strangers, Early and his girlfriend Adele, not knowing that Early was a killer. Brian records his thoughts on a hand-held voice recorder as he visits murder sites. At the end of the movie, he plays a tape he made of Early, who killed Adele during the trip before he was killed by Brian.
Brian forgets to turn off the tape and leaves the room with his girlfriend. Then we hear a recording of Adele's voice apologizing for using Brian's tape recorder and thanking him and his girlfriend for taking her and Early on the trip to California. She says that they are the only friends she and Early have, and that is the last thing we hear in the movie.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2003
This takes place in an alternate version of the end of the 19th century that uses technologies not yet invented at that point in our timeline.
When the good guys on the submarine Nautilus drop a gramophone needle on a disc sent by the villain they hear his voice explaining his evil plans. At the end of his message he explains that the disc has also been playing supersonic notes that have triggered bombs to explode, and that's what happens. That's some old school hi-fi recording.
The Vast of Night 2019
Spoilers.
This flying-saucer story uses old reel-to-reel tape recorders throughout: we see a new portable machine bought by a high school girl that she asks a radio station DJ to teach her how to use; and another recorder used at a basketball game to record the game announcer and broadcast later; there's a tape of an alien broadcast circulated by ex-military men and played on the air at the radio station; and there's a large portable machine the radio station DJ brings to the home of a woman to record her explanation of the odd sounds and strange lights in the sky that are happening that night. The woman tells of a strange language she heard years ago and a trail of her young son's footprints that suddenly stopped, leading her to believe he was abducted by aliens. The last thing we see in the movie, after seeing the DJ and the teenage girl standing below an alien spacecraft, is a trail of footprints that stops suddenly at the tape recorder with the interview of the woman. It can be assumed that when the tape is found and played, there will be an explanation for their disappearance.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York 1992
We see Kevin McCallister at his home in Chicago holding a "Talkboy," a portable cassette recorder with a grip handle, a speaker, and a built-in microphone that lets him record and play back sound. (Originally a prop made just for the movie, the Talkboy was made into a real commercial product that became a best-seller.)
Kevin uses the Talkboy to record his uncle singing in the shower then yelling at him to get out of the bathroom. Later when he is alone in a hotel room in New York City and discovers that a hotel concierge is about to enter the room to check up on him because he is suspicious that his father is not staying with him, Kevin goes into the bathroom, turns on the shower, and plays back the recording of his uncle. Hearing that convinces the concierge that Kevin's father is with him.
Earlier, to rent the hotel room, Kevin recorded his voice on the recorder, then called the front desk and played the recording back at a slower speed to make himself sound like an adult. This worked, and he checked in.
Later he records two thieves explaining their plan to rob a toy store, then gives the cassette to the police.
Color Out of Space 2019
A strange old man squatter has his makeshift cabin in the woods wired up with solar-powered electricity. After a meteor crashes nearby and starts to cause disruptions in the area, we see him in the cabin listening to a 1/4-inch reel-to-reel recording of what he says are sounds of the people under the floor who are aliens brought by the meteor. He says nobody would believe him unless he recorded them on Memorex. At the end of the film, the narrator finds him dead in the cabin as a tape recorder plays his voice explaining the terrifying events that we have seen in the film.
The Sixth Sense 1999
Child psychologist Malcolm Crowe plays an old cassette tape recording he made of a session with one of his patients to try to learn why the boy became violent ten years later. He hears a faint sound in the background of the recording so he turns the volume up all the way and hears the voice of a ghost speaking Spanish saying "I don't want to die. Save me!" From this learns that the boy was hearing ghosts and that the ghosts are not dangerous, they only want someone to help them.
My Life as a Zucchini 2016
A ten-year-old girl named Camille runs away from an orphanage to avoid having to live with her evil aunt. When the aunt leaves to find Camille, one of the boys hides a small digital recorder in a toy and asks her aunt to bring it to her. Camille finds the recorder and plays a message from the boy telling her what to do with it. When Camille and her aunt go to see a judge who will decide if her aunt can keep her, Camille plays a recording she made of her angry aunt threatening her. When the judge hears the recording, he refuses to let the aunt take her.
Notorious 1946
American spy Devlin is trying to recruit Alicia, the daughter of a man sentenced as a traitor for working with the Nazis. She refuses to help him, saying she is not a patriot. Devlin tells Alicia that her Miami bungalow has been bugged. Then he puts a disc recording his agency made of a conversation between her and her father onto her record player and plays it. She hears herself refusing to help her father because he is a traitor and because she loves her country. This helps to convince her to go to Brazil to spy for Devlin and his agency.
The Place Beyond the Pines 2012
Police officer Avery uses a mini cassette recorder hidden on his person to record a fellow cop asking him to commit a crime. Avery plays the tape for his supervisor to get the crooked cop and his accomplices arrested and to get himself a promotion.
The Pajama Game 1957
The supervisor of a pajama factory presses record on a memo recorder on his desk and records himself singing a song. He plays back the song and talks back to it, then he sings along with it, singing a duet with himself.
Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze 1975
In 1936, Doc Savage has a telephone answering machine system that consists of a device that lifts up the telephone mouthpiece to a speaker then plays his outgoing message from a disc on a turntable into the speaker. When the message is finished, the caller's message is sent from the telephone earpiece into a microphone which then sends the sound to a recordable turntable which records the message onto a disc. Pushing a red button on the telephone plays the message from the newly-recorded disc.
Nightmare Alley 2021
In 1941 Cate Blanchett plays a psychiatrist who uses a wire recorder to record her clients. Bradley Cooper plays a con man who breaks into the cabinet where she stores the recordings and plays one back to learn about a man he is going to con.
For Your Eyes Only 1981
A micro-cassette recorder with a microphone is hidden in a candle lamp on a restaurant table to record and play back a conversation with James Bond.
The Changeling 1980
After the tragic death of his family, a composer moves into an old haunted mansion. Using a two-track reel-to-reel recorder he records himself playing a piano melody that he thinks is original. Later, in a hidden room in the mansion he finds an old music box that plays what sounds like the same melody. He plays it simultaneously with the tape and they are exactly the same.
He brings in a medium who conducts a séance which he records on the tape recorder. The next day he plays back the tape and hears a ghostly voice on the tape that they did not hear during the séance.
The Outfit 2022
A small portable 1950s cassette recorder is hidden by the F.B.I. in a Chicago tailor shop to record conversations by mobsters who congregate there. The police and rival mobs fight and kill each other to get the cassette, but we discover that it was a fake that will not incriminate anyone once it is played. We see a flashback of the tailor using the machine to make a phony recording in order to trade it for a suitcase full of cash. He then arranges to have a different cassette sent to the F.B.I. that contains recorded evidence that will incriminate both mobs.
Glass Onion 2022
A woman presses record then throws a portable digital recorder into another woman's bag to record her conversations while investigating a murder. She sneaks into the woman's room, removes the recorder, and listens to it, which provides some useful information.
Decision to Leave 2022
A woman murder suspect who gets involved with a police detective uses the recorder on her smart watch to secretly record him saying incriminating things to her, things that also prove to her that he loves her. We see her playing it back later on her phone just to hear it. She gives the recording to him and we see him listening to it, also.
Babylon 2022
This takes place during the transition period from silent to sound films. We don't actually see recording and playback, but there is a tremendous sequence that shows the nightmarish problems encountered by the actors, the directors, the sound person, and the camera person on a sound stage at the time when they are all learning how to record sound with picture on crowded noisy sets with people who are not used to being quiet on a movie set.
Mindhorn 2016
The Kestrel makes a costume for TV detective character Mindhorn that includes a small recording device. Mindhorn uses it to record and play back a woman confessing her part in a murder.
Unfaithfully Yours 1948
Alfred suspects his wife is cheating on him and fantasizes about killing her and incriminating her lover Tony. In the fantasy he imitates his wife's voice being murdered, screaming and calling out Tony's name, and records it with a disc recording machine. Then he murders his wife in the bedroom with a straight razor. When Tony comes into the apartment's living room, Alfred gets Tony's fingerprints on the razor. Alfred goes back into the bedroom, plants the razor by his wife's corpse, and puts the recorded disc on a record changer, configuring it to play a music recording first, then to play his disc afterwards to lure Tony to the crime scene at the exact time that the telephone operator calls his apartment so she will hear that Tony has murdered his wife. Tony is caught and goes to trial where he is sentenced to death.
Later Alfred decides to carry out the plan in real life. He sets up the disc recorder, which the instructions call a "Simplicitas Home Recording Unit" that records at 78 RPM and 33 1/3 RPM and claim that it is "So simple, it operates itself," but that is not Alfred's experience. He struggles to make a disc and eventually ends up with one that is playing his voice at a very slow speed as his wife and others come into the apartment wondering what the horrible noses are, forcing him to abandon the plan.
M3gan 2022
Using an internal digital recording device, a robot named M3GAN records the voice of a 12-year-old girl named Cady telling a story about her deceased mother, then she plays it back for Cady, telling her that she can always remember the story because M3GAN has saved it for her.
Earth Girls Are Easy 1988
The three space aliens are virtual sound recording and playback machines. They can imitate and reproduce any sounds they hear using their mouths.
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers 1956
It's only two hours after rocket scientist Dr. Russell A. Marvin married his wife Carol and his idea of a romantic honeymoon is to let her drive while he dictates a report about rockets on a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder sitting on his lap. (That heavy little box must have been a sweet new tech toy in 1956, sort of like the latest iPhone would be to us.) He hears a strange sound and stops talking but forgets to turn off the tape recorder. The sound is from a flying saucer that buzzes their car then disappears. They wonder if they've gone crazy, then drive on.
At the rocket base, Carol plays back the tape to listen to his message and transcribe it on a typewriter and they are surprised to hear the sound of the flying saucer. That proves they weren't hallucinating. Because tape recorders were strange new technology in 1956, she explains for the audience that he forgot to turn off the tape recorder and that's how the flying saucer sounds got onto the tape.
The next day the Marvins go into a bunker to observe a rocket launch when an alien flying saucer lands at the rocket base. The saucer is shot at by soldiers, so the aliens destroy the entire base and capture an Army General. They explain to the General that they sent Dr. Marvin a message (the sounds recorded on the tape) but he didn't decipher the message. (They're advanced enough to master interstellar travel, but they couldn't think of a better way to communicate?)
After the aliens attack, the Marvins are trapped in the underground bunker. He records a farewell message on the tape recorder, but the batteries have lost power which slows down the tape so he stops recording. He presses play and now they hear the message the aliens sent earlier - that it's urgent that Dr. M meets them the next day at noon at the rocket base. He gives another explanation to the 1950s B-movie audience, saying that the message was sent at an accelerated speed so it sounded like gibberish, but when the batteries died the tape slowed down and the voice became clear. (So why did they send the message at an accelerated speed?) He takes the tape to D.C. and plays it for all the top brass as evidence of the aliens.
Horrible Bosses 2011
A murderer chasing three men crashes into their car, which causes the car's navigation guide system to call the police and start recording. He pulls a gun on the men and confesses to the murder then tells them he's framing them for it. The police show up and start to arrest the three men, until they learn that the nav guide "automatically records all conversations for quality assurance." When they hear the recording, the police arrest the real murderer.
A boy and a girl set up a meeting with the agent of an actor they suspect of a crime. They need to get him to leave his house so their mother can search it. During the meeting they each secretly record the agent's voice with a hidden small cassette recorder. Then they call the actor at his home from a phone booth, hold the tape recorders up to the phone, and play back the agent's words so he thinks his agent is calling and telling him to leave right away to meet her for lunch, which he does.
Klute 1971
Sound recording is used throughout this film including these examples: the very first shot is of a miniature reel-to-reel recorder; a private eye records a call girl's phone calls and plays them back to her; the call girl learns that someone has recorded one of her encounters with a customer when it is played back over her telephone; at the end we learn that the miniature tape recorder we have seen several times belongs to a killer as we hear him play back a recording of himself killing a woman.
Along Came a Spider (2001)
A man kidnaps a girl and records her voice on a micro-cassette recorder. He plays back the recording over the telephone to a detective. Then he alters his voice and has a conversation with the detective who records their phone conversation on a micro-cassette recorder. Later the detective plays back the recording to others involved in the investigation.
Mark of the Tortoise (1964)
The villain lives in a seaside castle in Italy with video and audio surveillance equipment that includes a small reel-to-reel tape recorder built into a cabinet along with a telephone system. He needs a kidnapped man to tell his friend that he's OK, so he forces the man to record a message to tape, so he can't suddenly tell him the truth, then he calls the friend and plays the tape back with the phone held up to a speaker.