10 Incredible Movies That Barely Have Any Dialogue
Film-makers say it best when they say nothing at all.
During the early years of cinema, film-makers didn't have the luxury of exposition when telling stories. With no sound, it wasn't as easy as just sticking a few characters in a room and having them hash out long stretches of plot through dialogue.
It's for this reason that other forms of communication had to be employed, making for an increased emphasis on body language and facial expression. But just because modern cinema has the luxury of dialogue doesn't mean it's totally forgotten alternate methods of communication.
In reality, there are all sorts of ways film-makers can convey intention, like creating tone or atmosphere with music or simply by showing us specific ways in which characters react to their surroundings.
Want to see how it's done in practice? Take a look at these ten incredible examples.
10. The Bear
French film The Bear - directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and released in 1988 - is proof that dialogue is far from cinema's only meaningful form of communication. The Bear tells the story of an orphaned bear cub who befriends an adult grizzly bear, exploring their lives and subsequent attempt to escape from a pair of hunters tracking them through the wild.
As you might expect, the two bears don't do a lot of talking (nor, in fact, do the hunters pursuing them), but that doesn't stop them from connecting in a meaningful way.
Throughout the film's hour and a half run time we see the grizzly teach the cub various skills to survive: how to fish, hunt and find a safe place to sleep. It's these actions to develop their relationship, showing how they live and survive as a pair.
It's an extremely unique piece of film-making, made all the more impressive by the fact that it required the training of two real bears, a nine-foot tall Kodiak bear named Bart and a young female bear named Douce.