Not a word (movie scenes)

Manuel Royal

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I love good dialogue. I can write mediocre dialogue myself; I'm just good enough to appreciate when someone's really good.

Shakespeare's greatest plays are almost entirely lines of dialogue, with minimal directions. Many great (or at least good) movies have memorable dialogue. The snappy, overlapping lines in Howard Hawks' movies; the naturalistic, multiply-overlapping background dialogue in Robert Altman's pictures; the vivid, spare lines of a John Wayne western; the smooth witty patter in a sophisticated comedy.

Here's (as I recall) one of my favorite movie lines:
I've seen it before: some hard-boiled egg takes one look at a pretty face, and -- bang! -- he cracks up and goes sappy!

But --

Cinema is above all a visual medium. Sometimes, the images communicate what's needed, and there's just nothing for the characters to say at that moment. I especially like scenes where the writer could have put some kind of speech into the character's mouth, but realized it would have weakened the moment.

Two examples to start off:

1) The final scene in The Third Man. What is there to say? Whatever he might have been hoping to hear, she's not gonna say it.

2) A scene in Knightriders, towards the end. Ed Harris comes into a diner to confront the fat, corrupt, abusive Sheriff's Deputy who had harassed his troupe and beaten up his friend earlier. The Deputy is just about to cram a bacon cheeseburger into his maw. Ed Harris sits down across from him, and doesn't say a word; just gives the guy a second to register that he's there. Then -- pow -- beats the crap out of him and throws him in the walk-in cooler. (Nobody interferes; in fact they're happy to see Officer Porky get the ass-kicking he deserves.)

So, does anybody else like scenes like that?
 

sailor

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First that comes to mind are the Sergio Leone westerns. His extreme closeups of the cowboys faces in the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West. Jack Elam and others waiting for the train and Charles Bronson. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly finale where Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef have the staredown in the graveyard. Ennio Morricone's music and the increasing pace of the camera cuts.

From television come two. First, Buffy the Vampire Slayer had one episode where voices were stolen. At the climax, Buffy finds out her boyfriend Riley is really one of the military guys she's seen around. When they finally can speak, they just sit on opposite beds and stare at each other.
During one scene of The Wire, Bunk and McNulty, two homicide detectives, are examining an old crime scene. They go about their business saying only one word, fuck. The variations in how they use it, the inflections and tone, says tons.
 

Cyia

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I hate the movie Titanic as a whole, but I think it contains one of the most beautifully choreographed tragedy scenes ever filmed. The one section of the sinking, while the orchestra members are playing "Nearer My God to Thee", and there's no dialogue, just the strings and the movement of the water is near perfect.

Likewise the "Order 66" massacre in Star Wars, when the Jedi were slaughtered has a poetic tint to it - no words required.

And this one's really, really old school, but (and if you ignore the acting and the exaggerated facial expressions from the rest of the film) the mirrored wall scene in Enter the Dragon is just a really cool set-up for an action scene.
 

Manuel Royal

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During one scene of The Wire, Bunk and McNulty, two homicide detectives, are examining an old crime scene. They go about their business saying only one word, fuck. The variations in how they use it, the inflections and tone, says tons.
That's the only scene from that show I've seen.
 

Romantic Heretic

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I'm thinking of the start of Up. Pixar caught a couple's whole life in about eight minutes without a word spoken. My favourite part of the movie.
 

Cyia

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Have you ever seen the "melon scene" from Day of the Jackal? No words, just a guy, a rifle, and an ill-fated watermelon that goes so much farther in showing the assassin's cold calculation than the bloody version used in the remake.
 

blacbird

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First that comes to mind are the Sergio Leone westerns. His extreme closeups of the cowboys faces in the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West. Jack Elam and others waiting for the train and Charles Bronson. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly finale where Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef have the staredown in the graveyard. Ennio Morricone's music and the increasing pace of the camera cuts.

Wholehearted agreement here. These scenes are magnificent.

In a different vein, I've always been fascinated by the scene early in Chinatown, where Jack Nicholson's detective Jake Gittes is following around the L.A. Water Commissioner, Hollis Mulwray, whose wife thinks he's cheating on her and has hired Gittes to tail him. He follows Mulwray to a dry river bed, and watches from a distance through binoculars as Mulwray gets out of his car, unfolds some kind of big map or chart across the hood, looks around, and sees a kid riding slowly up the watercourse on a horse. He speaks briefly with the kid, which of course Gittes can't hear and neither do we, and the kid rides slowly away. All this time Gittes doesn't have clue one what's really going on, and neither does the movie audience. It's one of the most perfect uses of POV in a movie I can think of, and with nary a word of dialogue throughout.

caw
 

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There is a scene in A Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart goes to meet his brother off the train. And is introduced to his brother's new wife. As they walk away, Jimmy's character realises that he is going have to stay in town and will never be able to fulfill his life-long wish to travel the world. His life has crumpled around his feet.

And we see this in just one long shot of Jimmy's face. His expression as he turns his head and watches his brother walk down the platform. Not a word. Not a sound. Just some of the best acting I've ever seen.
 
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SirOtter

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Here's (as I recall) one of my favorite movie lines: I've seen it before: some hard-boiled egg takes one look at a pretty face, and -- bang! -- he cracks up and goes sappy!

Pretty close. :) King Kong is my favorite film. The original, neither remake.

I love silent movies, but they weren't really silent, were they? Lots of intertitles, but sometimes they didn't need intertitles. The scene at the end of Chaplin's City Lights when the formerly blind girl realizes that it was the Little Tramp who saved her vision needs nothing but her gesture and smile, and his reaction, to choke me up every time I watch it.
 

kuwisdelu

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Does it have to be a movie?

If not...

eva-episode-24.jpg
 

Manuel Royal

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Does it have to be a movie?

If not...

eva-episode-24.jpg
Yes, Kuwi, it has to be a movie. But now that you've violated that rule and gotten crappy anime all over my nice thread, you might as well provide some context; otherwise we're left with what looks like a sample from a 16-year-old's notebook, and no explanation as to what the hell it is.
 

randi.lee

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One of my favorites is the "You can't handle the truth" monologue from A Few Good Men. I actually memorized it for an acting class.
 

Manuel Royal

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Pretty close. :) King Kong is my favorite film. The original, neither remake.
I knew I should have gotten the DVD out to check the wording. (Though since that goes in the opposite direction from my intention for this thread, I guess it doesn't matter.)

In one of my favorite movies, The Last Picture Show, the scene where Sonny (Timothy Bottom) first comes to Coach Popper's house to have sex with the Coach's wife, Ruth (Cloris Leachman) is almost without dialogue; their body language conveys the mixed clumsiness, nervousness, desperation and odd tenderness of the scene.
 

Manuel Royal

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One of my favorites is the "You can't handle the truth" monologue from A Few Good Men. I actually memorized it for an acting class.
I hate that monologue, but it is a famous example of the opposite of what I was hoping we might discuss here. (Please see thread title, OP.)

Cranky today. Some sciatic pain in my left left, the opposite of the leg where I usually have it. Perhaps it's opposites day.