Yahoo News The Best Films With (Almost!) Zero Dialogue: ‘All Is Lost,’ ‘Robot Dreams,’ and More
Nowadays, films can be a little too chatty. Cinemas are flooded with blockbusters in which all of the action and suspense is drowned out by a steady stream of quips and jokes from the superheroes or action protagonists we’re supposed to find charming. Instead, the constant banter often has the opposite effect, provoking a headache above all else. The reliance on a constant, flowing stream of exposition and reminders about what’s happening is apt to make you long for the good old days before “The Jazz Singer” ruined everything.
Okay, maybe that’s too dramatic. But there is something to be said about a movie that knows when words are necessary. As the name of the medium (movie, or moving images) suggests, film has always been a haven for strong visual storytelling, and oftentimes, words aren’t necessary when a silent shot or a facial expression from a skilled actor will do. In the silent era, intertitles were used to provide a bit of context to the stories otherwise being told by a black-and-white screen and music from an orchestra. But the best directors of the era knew how to keep those cards to a minimum, instead trusting their actors’ performances to sell the story.
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Even as sound was introduced and became the norm, there’s always been something captivating about films that keep the chatter to an absolute minimum. When words and exposition are erased from a film, it forces the audience to focus more deeply on what the director is conveying onscreen, and how all the elements of a production — from cinematography to editing to score to acting to sound design to production design and on and on and on — work in tandem to tell the story. Occasionally, telling a film with absolutely no dialogue can be merely a gimmick, but when the restraint has purpose and intent, it can pay off to let the audience bask in a film’s silence.
In recent years, there’s been an abundance of films that make dialogue a secondary element of the storytelling. “A Quiet Place” is a notable example, making the lack of speech a plot point through its premise of a world ravaged by aliens that track down humans who make noise. With prequel “A Quiet Place: Day One” now in theaters, IndieWire is taking a look at other notable films that let silence do the talking. With one exception, this list does not include films made during the silent era, when a lack of dialogue was due to technical restraints rather than intent. Read on for 10 great films with little to zero dialogue.
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