Suggest some films that have absolutely no script at all…

No speaking from the actors please 🙂

All I can think of at the moment is old black and white films before “talkies” that had overacting wooden actors pulling silly faces just before a black screen flashed up with “oh no, the Count doesn’t want to let me in the castle!” in wibbly writing.

Is there anything modern that I’ve missed where a director has managed to tell a story without any script? 🙂

Cheers in advance!

I suppose the 1976 film “Silent Movie” doesn’t quite qualify….

[pedant]
Either you aren’t using the word “script” correctly or your explanation is crap.
[/pedant]

The original 10000BC ? no speaking at all iirc.

Quest for Fire.

The Plank, Eric Sykes + Tommy Cooper. It’s got grunting though.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nok_mfFVFkM[/video]

@vinneyh – there’s plenty of films on t’interweb with no dialogue and lots of grunting 😀

Luc Besson (Big Blue, Leon, 5th Element etc) made a film called ‘Atlantis’ which was a load of underwater footage over a musical soundtrack.

Big chunks of Wall-E are pretty low on dialoge

sorry druidh, it was early.. my explanation was indeed crap 🙂 films with no talking… doesn’t need to be completely devoid of actors… but those actors need to be acting with their bodies and not their voices.

will check out Atlantis thepurist… sounds like it could be the closest to what i was thinking of this morning, i really like the way music videos sometimes tell a story using images and music and am intrigued to see if its been successfully done on a bigger scale 🙂

EDIT – just ordered Atlantis from play.com less than 6paahhhnds, bargain.

Not quite no dialog (in fact not even close) but this tells a story in a fairly unique way. A whole film in one single take.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J–TDEHizVA[/video]

Luc Besson likes non dialogue stuff, it would appear.

Le Dernier Combat / The Last Battle contains no dialogue also.

Tetsuo the Iron Man was pretty close too I think, but I seem to remember there being a few bits of dialogue.

No actors though Phil – but it’s a bit more arty than Blue Planet

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz99iLj6NcY[/video]

Heaps of info on non-verbal films here too including

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirH8PADDgQ[/video]

i love Blue Planet, pretty much know the whole thing inside out after years of watching it watching it nearly every night as I fall asleep 😀

Hell in The Pacific?
I haven’t seen it in years but I don’t think there is a lot of dialogue.

Baraka worth watching but no actors.

Bicycle Trick Riding Number 2 ?

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5hSsay6DHI[/video]

Baraka +1

There is also a film Called Belleville Rendezvous which is an animated film about a cyclist and his mum which has only a handful of words in it. I have it on DVD if you want to borrow it.

Koyanisquatsi et al, Chronos by Ron Fricke, can’t think of any others but I have all of the ones mentioned.

Rhubarb

The only word in the whole film is Rhubarb.

i will steal some of your dvd’s this weekend then torm 😀 all on dvd or will i need a usb stick?

all on dvd or will i need a usb stick?

All on DVD. Why you looking for wordless films?

The Snowman?

need to set myself a filming project to work on that isn’t just riding videos.. know a lot of musicians and a couple would be quite excited by the prospect of writing a score i think. looking for inspiration 🙂

also need a story to tell via music/images, hoping an idea appears in my mind at some point! time to hit up barnsleymitch’s imagineering suit and supply of LSD perhaps

quite possible cheating as it’s only 3 minutes long, but: here(takes a couple of minutes to sort itself out)

saw it in an art gallery last year – it was horrendously grotesque (and thus brilliant) when projected onto one wall of a tiny pitch black room – atmospheric stuff..

I don’t recall much dialogue in the animated film Jungle Burger, but I’m not going to Google it from work to find out…

Castaway doesn’t have a huge amount of dialogue in it, for a “big” movie.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDXgcBQVJCw[/video]
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeKKeiXTBos[/video]
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2RKlDFmui4[/video]

spasmic, that made me cringe more than anything a patient has said to me ever. surprisingly disturbing!!

Anal Invasion 5 ?

spasmic, that made me cringe more than anything a patient has said to me ever. surprisingly disturbing!!

toe-curlingly discomforting isn’t it? yet i couldn’t leave ’til i’d seen it half a dozen times. between that and the graphic chinese porn drawings, it was a good day out at the gallery..

i’m thinking i might be best trying to tell some kind of mental health type story… paranoia strikes me as something that could be shown using some interesting visuals and not need a voice explaining it. hmmmmmm

There are lots of short films that fit your criteria. That nailbiter film is pretty unpleasant but shows some influence of the early fims of David Lynch and also Chris Cunningham (made the Aphex Twin videos).

One of David Lynch’s influences was Maya Deren who made (mostly silent) short films. I really like her films – you can find them on youtube maybe have a look at ’At Land’. It’s quite simple film making in a way and fairly transparent, you can see the storyboarding and narrative effect of editing (and the pace of the edit) in the finished films.

David Lynch and also Chris Cunningham

delicious! this thread is going in my favourites so i can check into everything properly

cheers for all the links and ideas guys 🙂

I was going to say Belleville Rendezvous but beaten to it! I think some of the studio Ghibli ones may also be almost silent but its been ages since i’ve watched them so can’t remember.

La Cabina, a 35 min Spanish horror film, 1072, no dialogue and quite scary.

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday…A Jacques Tati film….some background voices only, but no dialogue from the actors IIRC

Is that Victorian freestyle video real? Holy cow! Can’t believe peopel are still trying to do the same tricks!

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait has no dialogue. It’s also tremendously boring.

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait has no dialogue. It’s also tremendously boring.

But it has Mogwai doing the soundtrack 8)

you could check out la antena. very little in the way of dialogue, that being kind of the point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWtWib9k7hs

i can’t abide douglas gordon in the normal course of things but i loved zidane! the mogwai ws the only thing about it i found vaguely intrusive and annoying.

Haven’t read the thread but Belleville Rendezvous