Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but the end of Nights of Cabiria is almost dialogue-free, and is certainly a very good scene, as both Giulietta Masina and the audience go from being utterly despondent to chipper again.
Oddly parallels the very end of The Long Good Friday, which is basically the opposite; it’s an almost unbroken close-up shot of Bob Hoskins’ face as he realises that his day has just got a whole lot worse.
My first thought was the sequence where Dave Bowman goes out in an EVA pod to rescue Frank Poole, who he believes to be dead but isn’t sure. It’s about five minutes long and consists mostly of a whirring sound, a tick-bong noise, and silence. A sneaky way of getting a mainstream audience to listen to Stockhausen. Despite this it’s gripping. Will he operate the arms correctly? Will the bong noise change in pitch?
“The whole film Jeremiah Johnson has very little dialogue and tells the story well without it.”
“Anyway, I am dead. Sincerley, Hatchet Jack.” Hollywood in the 1970s is a rich seam of films with dialogue-free sequences. The final sequence of The Conversation, where Gene Hackman destroys his flat whilst searching for a bug that might not be there. Can’t remember if it had any dialogue though. Had sax.
I came in here to mention The Big Night as well. And ArrMatey, if you want to see films with great silent food scenes, try Eat Drink Man Woman and Tampopo.
There are quite a few great dialogless scenes in that movie. Mark showing the cards to Juliet springs to mind. And the scene where Harry is buying the necklace – yes, there is dialog, but it’s really the visual schtick that Rowan Atkinson does so well.
This. The last 15 min. or so of Last of the Mohicans might be my favorite film moment ever. So powerful and beautifully shot, with virtually no dialogue under the very end.
I guess I have to be the guy to poop on the party and post a couple of TV episodes. First (of course), *Hush *from Buffy the Vampire Slayer - three-quarters of it has no dialog.
Second, the Valentine’s Day episode of Fraiser, where Niles is trying to iron his pants. ten minutes of silent comedy gold.
My favorite silent scene will always be from Dr. Zhivago, when Yuri Zhivago watches Lara and Victor Gromeko through the window after curing Lara’s mother. I just love that movie, honestly.
Also the scene near the end, when Zhivago, on a streetcar, sees Lara walking in the street, and as he exits the streetcar and tries to reach her his heart plays out.
(I may be misremembering, though. Was there dialogue in that scene? Searched for a clip unsuccessfully.)
I am not a big Buffy fan, but I do love this episode, for the very reason that it is a great example of telling a story with pictures. (Although…there are some “cheats” along the way.)
Came in to mention exactly this. I love this film, I think it’s hugely under rated and one of my favorites. This scene is just fantastic in its power, I think. Hoskins is great.
I was going to mention the end. The way the final shootout is staged and filmed is utterly brilliant. And the scene of Tuco running through the graveyard has some of the best music ever written for a film.
If ‘great’ can mean tons of humorous storytelling, and thousands of words of exposition reduced to a funny silent sequence, the beginning of*** Chicken Run ***(Ginger tries to escape many times, and keeps getting caught and thrown in solitary) has few equals.
It establishes the whole point of conflict of the movie, and manages to convey that it’s like a WWII German prison camp, but *not *a concentration camp.
I’ll add the opening sequence from Joe vs. The Volcano:
There’s also a great, very subtle no-dialogue scene in the middle of the movie where Joe has arrived in Los Angeles from New York (where he spent most of his life), and having stayed awake his whole first night in LA, he’s sitting on the beach, alone, at sunrise. He’s staring out to sea, and he slowly turns his head to look over his shoulder at the sun coming up behind him. It took several viewings of the movie before I really grasped the significance of this scene, because it was so subtle. Being raised on the East Coast, Joe has seen the sun come up over the ocean his entire life. His staring out to sea at sunrise on the West Coast symbolized the miserable, negative rut his life had been in up to that point. Looking over his shoulder to see the sun coming up represented his realization that all that was behind him now, and indeed it’s the turning point of the movie. Everything that follows is about as far from “in a rut” as you can get.
The Longest Day has a tracking scene starting from space practically that zooms in to the French(?) fighting building to building in Casino. I do not believe any words are spoken. If anybody can find it on line, I’d be most happy as my googlefu is weak in this.
