Thanks. Something about that didn’t look right when I wrote it.
I just remembered a great scene - the fight between Jet Li and Donnie Yen in Hero:
Jet Li speaks a few brief lines in the middle, but otherwise the visuals tell the whole thing. And actually, that movie is full of scenes like this (though they’re not all fight scenes).
Thought of another one: the museum/seduction/surprise scene from Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill.
Unfortunately, I can’t find a clean clip of the scene on YouTube.
Man, Notting Hill was way better than it had any right to be.
The scene when all the soldiers realize there’s a baby among them and everything just stops.
The intercut scenes near the end of The Right Stuff with the Mercury astronauts at the BBQ in the Astrodome all exchanging looks while Clair de Lune plays and everyone is watching the fan dancer, and Yeager pushing a plane to its limits and then trying to recover from a flat spin.
(RIP Levon Helm)
The final scene in Big Night with Primo and Secondo cooking breakfast after the failed dinner.
Great choice. My friends think I’m a perv for thinking this was the best picture the year it came out.
My contribution will be the very recent ending montage of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Several scenes in Fred Zinneman’s Day of the Jackal, but especially the scene where the assassin The Jackal field-tests his now concealable rifle, sets the sight, and fires an explosive bullet at the target. If you’re watching the scene in a theater, there is an audible reaction from the crowd, of the sort I rarely hear. They’re sucked in by the Jackal’s preparations and awed by the payoff
Who Framed Roger Rabbit – near the beginning
Here, from 6:30 onwards: - YouTube
Eddie Valiant returns to his office, looks through pictures of himself and his brother, and the camera pans around the office, telling his life story without words.
Wrong link.
The final scene in Big Night
My nomination is the climactic scene from Battle of Britain; dialogue as such ends at about 1 minute in, although there are a few orders barked down radio mikes after that.
Post #5, although a different scene.
Wes Anderson is pretty good at this sort of thing. Royal Tenenbaum teaches his grandsons how to carpe diem. (Starts at 0:34)
Came in here to post this one. It somehow… It makes everything all right, even though the dinner failed. The simple love of the brothers for each other, even after practically wanting to kill each other. I saw that, and immediately wanted to phone my brothers just to see how they were doing.
(Also, as a side note, this is the only movie I’ve ever seen that inspired -hunger- when I watched it!)
When they showed this at the Kendall Sq. Cinema in Cambridge, they had a special dinner one night, where each theatergoer who bought into the vspecial promotion got an Italian dinner – which included a “mini-tympani” inspired by the dinner served in that film.
The beginning of **Wall-E **has already been mentioned, but deserves to be mentioned again.
I always liked the Art Institute scene in **Ferris Bueller’s Day Off **quite a bit, partially for what it does, and partially for the contrast it provides to the rest of the picture.
This scene from “The Loss of Sexual Innocence” (clip is SFW).
The scene where Emma Thompson breaks down in her bedroom to Joanni Mitchell, just after she realizes her husband may be unfaithful. Just a couple minutes, no dialogue and the most gut wrenching example of heartbreak I’ve ever seen.
The rest of the movie you can take or leave, but that scene is perfect.
An earlier post mentioned the Dawn of Man segment. As you mentioned, there are other long sequences without spoken words. If you stretch the term ‘no dialogue’ to allow monologues, then the sequence where David Bowman shuts down HAL’s higher functions is gripping.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukeHdiszZmE
I don’t know about y’all but “Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid” is about as creepy and sad as it gets.