Quest for Fire has all the dialogue spoken in completely made up/synthetic languages.
Dark Crystal is the only major live action non-wildlife movie I can think of that has no human characters in it.
My favorite vampire movie, Near Dark, does not have the word “vampire” spoken in it.
All the songs played in An American Werewolf in London had the word “moon” in them, with no less than 3 different versions of Blue Moon.
This can’t be too serious if we haven’t had a mention of the zithers in The Third Man.
Nor “ROSEBUD”
;j
Meet The Feebles has no human characters either.
Tape is another one confined to a single room (motel room). I think there is a brief shot out the doorway, and maybe a view from the outside once.
Castaway and The Quiet Earth had long stretches of just a single character acting. Is there a film with only a single character throughout?
In Weiter Ferne, so Nah! (Faraway, So Close!) mixed color with ‘black & white’, except the b&w film was lightly tinted a sepia color. I don’t think Der Himmel ueber Berlin (Wings of Desire), the first film of the series, used the same technique.
Speaking of coloring film, with 1984 ( the one starring John Hurt ) the film was washed to remove some of the color.
Likewise the b&w scenes in The Wizard of Oz (1939) were tinted sepia.
Two John Huston movies had “desaturated” color: Moulin Rouge (1952) and Moby Dick (1956). Huston wanted to do it again with Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), but the studio overruled him.
Give 'Em Hell, Harry! and Secret Honor (both adaptations of plays about presidents), have casts of one: James Whitmore as Harry Truman, and Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon.
Here’s something interesting:
Reading this thread is like watching a tennis match (cf the last scene of Blowup): it’s a repeating series of “Unique!” – “No, not unique!”
Has any movie mentioned so far stood the test of uniqueness? I don’t think so.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
You make a good point. Perhaps the “unique” qualification might better be replaced with “first” or maybe even “original.”
Since many movie fans have never seen those original versions, and have only been treated to some further generation copy, it’s hard to draw a reasonable line between the first to use an effect, a technique, a treatment or whatever, and the copy or copies of that aspect that an individual may have seen as a “first” and possibly “unique” one. I suppose the distinction evaporates once someone does see the original. Knowledgable moviegoers and critics can help educate the ones whose views of “unique” or “original” things are poorly drawn.
Citizen Kane is credited with many firsts, as are movies of the silent era and the early years of noir and other forms of expressionism. The advent of color brought additonal firsts and experiments.
So, locating the very first may be the way to resolve the “uniqueness” issue.
My OP film The Thief was just the first I saw with the no spoken dialog feature. For me it was “unique.” Once others were identified, it lost that designation, but it was still my first, and to now only, film of that type.
What the thread has done, I believe, is to have pointed at a pretty good variety of things that have been presented to movie audiences in an effort to catch their attention. Many of us wouldn’t know about those things except by way of a discussion like this, or else a really good book on the subject. I have yet to find such a book.
So, all told, this thread is better than nothing on the subject.
Agree or disagree?
Maybe this is lame, but to me The Ring was so terrifying in part because there was no stupid danger music, no warning sounds, no knowing when something was coming. Even one catchy tune would have destroyed the mood.
And the cliche sh** about “we put her to rest, she’s OK now” turned out to be wrong, which was something to be grateful for; IOW the woman’s bleeding heart liberalism was a bad thing in this case. No, the girl didn’t just want to be heard, she really WAS evil, Rachel. Possibly not unique (esp since it was a remake lol) but different enough to be A) genuinely frightening and B) quite memorable.
“Russkij kovcheg (Russian Ark - 2002), a 96-minute movie, was shot in one single take (no cuts) and they had just one day to shoot the film.”
Timecode, an independent film, was shot in one continuous hour and a half take.
I heard an interview with Frances McDormand on NPR shortly after Fargo came out. The interviewer mentioned that Fargo is the only movie where the main character is pregnant, but that the pregnancy isn’t some kind of a plot device. Usually, if a main character is pregnant, it’s either because she will go into labor at an inopportune time (like in Fortress) or because the pregnancy itself is…well think Rosemary’s Baby or Alien(s).