The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’ delightful mash note to the silent cinema, is looking like a sure bet for heavy recognition at this year’s Oscars, racking up three SAG Award nominations, five Independent Spirit Award nominations, and six Golden Globe nominations, in addition to awards for best film of the year from the Boston Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Phoenix Film Critics Society, and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association. It’s easy to see why film critics in particular have taken to it: it evocatively tells the story of the end of the silent era as a silent movie, complete with black-and-white photography and period music (even using the traditional 1.33:1 aspect ratio).
But it’s not the first sound-era film to ape the silent style; aside from Chaplin’s final silent pictures, done well after sound had taken over, there’s Mel Brooks’ 1976 slapstick tribute Silent Movie, and Charles Lane’s 1989 indie Sidewalk Stories. What’s more, countless sound directors have used silent storytelling techniques to great effect, eschewing dialogue (and sometimes even sound effects) to work through their narrative beats via purely visual means. After the jump, we’ve assembled ten great “silent” scenes from the sound era; add your own in the comments.
Duck Soup
Leo McCarey was one of the few genuinely gifted comedy directors to work with the Marx Brothers; he came to his sole collaboration with the team, 1933′s Duck Soup, with a distinguished pedigree of comedy credits dating back to the mid-1920s, including several of Laurel & Hardy’s formative films. With his extensive silent movie background (while working for Hal Roach, he also wrote gags for Our Gang and Charley Chase), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of the best comic sequences in Duck Soup are throwbacks to that era: the byplay between Harpo, Chico, and competing street vendor Edgar Kennedy, for example, or the movie’s most famous scene, the immortal “mirror sequence.” It’s a bit that goes back to vaudeville, in which Harpo, who has broken into Groucho’s home, dresses as Groucho and attempts to hide his identity by posing as Groucho’s mirror image. It’s still one of the team’s most recognized routines, and was famously reworked by Harpo and Lucille Ball when he guest-starred on I Love Lucy twenty-plus years later.
Comments (42)
High fives for the openings of Wall-E and Up, two shining examples of the visual storytelling that makes the Pixar movies so fantastic. Also, I wholeheartedly agree with the inclusion of 2001, but for a different reason. 2001 is one of the few movies that takes place in outer space that remembers that sounds effects are impossible in the absence of air. Other examples include Joss Whedon’s Firefly follup-up, Serenity, and the all-but-forgotten Robot Jox from 1990, starring Gary Graham.
The car crash scene in Trafic, by Jacques Tati (1971).
Even the few audible words are mere sounds (a meaningless mix of French German and English)
Tati himself plays the role of the tall guy with a trench coat and slightly short trousers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6WZXrvOwp0
One minute of silence in Godard’s Bande A Part.
Castaway. How did that get missed?
@k- please see page 6.
My all-time favorite is from 1979′s ‘The Black Stallion’, after the shipwreck, there is (from what I remember) about 45 minutes of gorgeous wordless cinema with the boy and the horse on the desert island, as they get to know each other.
Regarding Cast Away, I thought this was a list of 10 “Great Silent Sequences”, not “Great Films with Silent Sequences”. The fact that I enjoyed the film as a whole aside, I don’t think a “terrible third act” should preclude a film which included several great silent sequences.
Kurosawa’s Ran – the ending of the silent battle with the sound of the shot that kills one of the brothers was heartbreakingly effective.
Tom hanks & Paul Newman in Road to perdition. silent shoot out scene. Amazing. Duh.
The island scene in Black Stallion: roughly half an hour with only music as the sound for the building of a relationship between the boy and the horse – absolutely stunning!!
Surely the opening scene from Once Upon a Time in the West deserves a mention. Incredible sequence.
I’m so glad someone mentioned the Black Stallion!! Unbelievable that Punch Drunk Love made this list and that incredible scene didn’t…
Battle scene in Kurosawa’s Ran is legendary. Can’t believe you missed that. Opening scene of Fargo and numerous magical silent scenes in Miyazaki’s films are also some of my favorites.
Almost an Tati–Traffic, Playtime, Mon Oncle
My two favoite nearly silent films are Dead Calm and Besieged. In both cases, the silence is organic to the story telling and not a gimmick.
THis isn’t totally silent – there are the sounds of chopping and sizzling – but I seem to remember the last few minutes of Big Night with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shaloub being silent as the two brothers worked together to make some omelets. Great scene.
With the exception of the brief overheard dialog, I love the scene from the beginning of Blow Out with John Travolta recording night noises. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh8N3Jk3uFA {from 9:13 – 11:44)
Almodovar’s Talk to Her.
The opening scene to Mishima was poetic.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the opening of Rio Bravo yet. It introduces us to the two main characters and sets up the story. All without any dialogue.
There are two sequences in Sling Blade that I thought were amazing. One is in the very beginning after Karl gets free where hes walking around a nameless town taking in the sights and sounds. The 2nd is where he goes back to confront his father about his past. While both are great, the latter steals the show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjT1dwG4YSI
I agree with Cs360 that a Miyazaki film should be in the mix – I adore the opening scene of Ponyo. You learn so much about her just by that sequence, with the beautiful watercolor-esque animation and great music.
What happened with the scene of “The Departed”? You know, the phone call or “dead guy’s phone” scene or whatever is called.
DiCaprio and Damon were great being directed by Scorsese. I think this scene shows it crearly.
Actually many of Hitchcock’s films have silent sequences.
Jules Dassin’s robbery scene in Topkapi. Very suspensful, no dialog, no music.
It’s too bad Genndy Tartakovski doesn’t make features, because he is a master of silent storytelling (as proven by several sequences in Samurai Jack and his 2005 version of Clone Wars).
Sergio Leone demonstrated on many occasions that he didn’t need dialogue to drive his movies. Someone pointed out “Once Upon a Time in the West”, but also the opening AND climax of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Granted, not much happens while three guys stand around staring at each other for five minutes, so Ennio Morricone probably deserves the credit for his score building the suspense.
Also, hard to believe no one mentioned Kim Ki-duk’s “3-Iron” yet, which is a masterpiece of silent film. Unless it is not considered a “talkie” since it totals approximately five minutes of…well, more like monologue in the entire 90 min movie.
No Hable con Ella?
Crop duster scene from North By Northwest.
The heist sequence from Melville’s Le cercle rouge (1970) which lasts for a full 25 minutes and is gorgeous.
The opening credits for Tarsem’s The Fall are beautifully done in black and white, with Beethoven’s Symphony no.7 playing in the background. Magnificent…..
What about the shootout scene after the bank robbery in Heat?!
Two sequences in David Lean’s 1948 version of “Oliver Twist”, neither of them completely silent. One is the opening sequence, in which, in the middle of a raging thunderstorm, Oliver’s pregnant mother struggles to get to the workhouse in which she will give birth.
***SPOILER AHEAD****
The other is the sequence immediately after Bill Sikes murders Nancy. He sits alone in their bedroom with the body and throws a blanket over it because the sight is presumably too terrible. Then, after a long silence, we start to see and hear Sikes’s hallucinations – first, Nancy’s voice, gently telling him that Fagin lied and she didn’t inform on the gang, then Fagin’s voice, softly telling Sikes that she did, followed by the imaginary sight of Sikes clubbing Fagin to death as he did Nancy, then all hell breaks loose as we hear some horrific howls. We cannot be sure if they are Sikes memories of Nancy’s screams or the sound of his dog Bullseye howling, since they sound so much alike.
Great collection. I would add or find room for the script-reading sequence in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979). While the characters are reading a script that must be (from their reactions) hilarious, the audience only hears what is making an impression on Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), the rapping of a pencil, the squeak of a chair. This leads up to a heart attack, and the claustrophobic nature of the silent scene makes the viewer feel similarly constrained.
Conan The Barbarian (1982)
MANY scenes to choose from, but two that stand out are the murder of Conan’s mother by James Earl Jones, and the finale when Conan liberates the snake cult and takes the princess back.
Awesome film making!
I like the opening to Contact. Its a zoom out of earth and space’s entirety. Really cool IMO
By far, the dumbest issue yet discussed here.
for me a huge one is Forrest Gump, after Jenny dies – Forrest looking around at empty rooms in the house, and it’s silent-silent, no music or sound at all. it’s devastating and effective.
I like the quiet scenes in Blow-UP,Antonioni’s film,especially the park scenes. Movies should draw the viewer into the story and quiet does that very well.Ridley Scott also does this in American Gangster with those shots of Lucas/ Thanksgiving dinner and the drug-addicted misery of his customers,what a statement.
In the City of Sylvia, by Jose Luis Guerin.
How about the first five or six minutes of “Rio Bravo”? Establishes three characters and a murder is committed.
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