In a world of honking horns, shrieking children, jackhammers on your street, and late-night partiers, sometimes it’s nice when everyone just shuts the heck up.
Hollywood and the entire movie medium normally rely heavily on a good script that uses dialogue to explain the story’s background, show the relationship between characters, and further the plot of the film.
But movies are primarily a visual medium, and stories can be told very effectively using the actors’ body language and facial expressions, as well as video editing to draw out the action and pacing. Remember that when Hollywood first began, all films were silent.
So, movies with little or no dialogue are nothing new, if you consider influential early films like The Birth of a Nation and Battleship Potemkin. So, what modern movies have little dialogue?
The 10 best movies with little to no dialogue
Some of the most inventive movies rely on stunning cinematography, a strong score, and clever video editing to engage viewers instead of conversations, monologues, and other forms of dialogue.
Here are ten examples of modern-day silent films:
10. Fantasia (1940)
It’s hard to imagine Mickey Mouse ever not being hugely popular, as these days the animated mouse is considered a classic cartoon superstar. But in the late 1930s, Disney was looking to revive Mickey’s popularity because people were not as interested in him as they were in the past.
So Disney took the nearly finished work, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and reworked it as a comeback vehicle for Mickey Mouse called Fantasia. And wow, did it make Mickey popular!
The classical music score was used instead of dialogue, and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Fantasia‘s fantastical and magical story is told using the work of over 1,000 artists and technicians, and it showcases over 500 animated characters.
9. Eraserhead (1977)
Do weird things float your boat? If so, this black-and-white David Lynch movie is for you. It is low on dialogue and high on extremely long and awkward pauses.
Following a hapless man who is living in a dystopian nightmare, while hallucinating about a woman and trying to take care of a deformed child, Eraserhead is considered a body-horror genre film that is now a beloved cult classic.
Seriously, its strangeness cannot be understated, and the dialogue that does exist is very odd, full of non-sequiturs, and hard to understand. However, it’s also absolutely worth a watch!
8. Drive (2011)
Mister Handsome, Mickey Mouse Club Alum, Britney Spears Contemporary, Ken… call him what you will, but Ryan Gosling is best known as a versatile and compelling actor — especially in this film!
Conveying subtle emotion without dialogue is no easy task, and Gosling does it with ease, as he plays a stunt driver whose side hustle is acting as a getaway driver for criminals. The story of Drive follows Gosling’s unnamed character, as he gets in hot water after trying to help his money-strapped neighbor.
The action-drama received a standing ovation at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and showcases strong performances by esteemed actors in addition to Gosling, including Bryan Cranston, Oscar Isaac, and Albert Brooks.
7. Cast Away (2000)
Cast Away is a legendary survival movie that showcases Tom Hanks’ incredible acting chops. While there is a little bit of dialogue in the movie, it mostly shows a silent struggle for survival when Hanks’ character is stranded on a deserted island.
This movie shows how 4 years of desperate isolation, and a will to live despite all of the creature comforts of modern life being absent, can affect a person. Hanks names a volleyball Wilson and uses it as a companion, while he hopes for rescue and to return to his normal life back home.
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
If you only watch the trailer, you’d think this film is full of dialogue. However, words are very sparse in this sci-fi classic by celebrated director Stanley Kubrick.
2001: A Space Odyssey tells the story of a journey to Jupiter, a scary supercomputer named HAL 9000 who works against the human crew, and the presence of a baffling monolith built by aliens. This movie is almost as strange as Eraserhead, and the lack of copious dialogue underscores the weirdness in both films.
Kubrick used the film score to raise the emotional stakes of the story, with composers including Richard Strauss and Aram Khachaturian creating the fraught atmosphere of this epic space tale.
5. Elephant (2003)
While there is some dialogue in this film, it is mostly a story told in long stretches of uncomfortable silence. Gus Van Sant wrote, directed, and video edited this movie as a fictionalized version of the Columbine school shooting tragedy.
The story begins right before the shooting and shows some of the students going about their lives at school and outside of school as well, totally oblivious to what is about to happen.
Gus Van Sant made Elephant as the second film in what is known as his “death trilogy” of movies based on real-life events. The first movie is called Gerry and is about lost hikers, and his third movie is named Last Days, a fictionalized account of Kurt Cobain’s last days on Earth.
4. The Bear (1988)
The Bear is a 1988 adventure based on James Oliver Curwood’s book The Grizzly King. It follows an orphaned bear cub who befriends a large bear while they are being hunted for sport, by trophy hunters.
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who made another famous film with no dialogue called Quest For Fire, created this quiet masterpiece using real bears instead of CGI-created characters. Because the bears are the stars, the film uses no dialogue.
There was a campaign to have the Academy Awards nominate the “actor” Bart the Bear for Best Actor, but ultimately, the bear was not included in the ceremony.
3. The Revenant (2015)
Speaking of bears, The Revenant is a Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle that’s famous for its bear attack scene.
In fact, DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for his riveting performance in the Alejandro G. Iñárritu survival drama that tells the story of an 1820s frontiersman who must survive in the wilderness after a bear attacks him, and his hunting team leaves him for dead.
While there is a little bit of dialogue, most of the film is made without it. DiCaprio really committed to his acting role, preparing for it by eating raw bison liver and getting hypothermia after sleeping in animal carcasses.
DiCaprio’s difficult preparations for the role paid off, because The Revenant was a massive hit, grossing over $500 million at the box office and being celebrated by movie critics and audiences alike.
2. All is Lost (2013)
This survival drama stars Robert Redford in a tour-de-force acting role about a man who is stranded at sea. All is Lost follows Redford’s nameless character’s struggle to survive, after his boat hits a drifting cargo container, and his boat begins to take on water.
Because he is alone, there is very little dialogue throughout this film. Viewers were on the edges of their seats because of Robert Redford’s evocative performance, and his character’s will to live despite facing deathly obstacles.
While Redford’s acting work on All is Lost was not recognized at that year’s Academy Awards, moviegoers recognize him as one of the greatest actors of his generation.
1. The Artist (2011)
Filmed in the style of a classic black-and-white silent movie, The Artist pays homage to the films that defined the birth of Hollywood.
This Oscar-winning French dramedy was directed by Michel Hazanavicius, and it tells the tale of a vain movie star who starts a relationship with a younger dancer.
The script for The Artist was inspired by the famous silent film actor and filmmaker, Douglas Fairbanks. Audiences and critics immediately became passionate fans of the movie, and The Artist cleaned up at the Academy Awards, winning five Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.