Great Movies That Have Almost No Dialogue
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Vote up the best movies with no dialogue and don't need any.
- 11,094 VOTESPixar's Academy Award-winning 2008 animated classic makes excellent use of imagery to tell the tale of a lonely trash collecting robot. There is a monologue at the beginning of the film, however, WALL-E doesn't have anyone to talk to until Eve enters the picture. WALL-E and Eve's first lines of dialogue do not come until 22 minutes into the movie.More WALL-E
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- 2980 VOTESPhoto: 20th Century FoxTom Hanks plays Chuck, a Fed-Ex worker who is marooned on a distant island, after a plane crash. Cast Away is the ultimate survival story. The audience watches as Chuck figures out how to make fire, build shelter, and find food. Eventually, Chuck finds a volleyball, which he names Wilson, to talk to, but for nearly the entire duration of Chuck's time on the island, there is only minimal dialogue.More Cast Away
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- 3636 VOTESPhoto: United ArtistsThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly is Sergio Leone's nearly three hour third installment of his Dollars trilogy. It is the quintessential spaghetti Western starring Clint Eastwood as Blondie, a man of few words. Leone tells the epic tale with wide shots, close-ups, and a iconic score by Ennio Morricone. Each of the three main characters (the good, the bad, and the ugly) is introduced with a prologue that lasts 30 minutes; during much of that time there is no dialogue.
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- 4705 VOTESPhoto: 20th Century FoxLeonardo DiCaprio plays real-life frontiersman Hugh Glass, who is left to die after being mauled by a bear. The actor barely has any dialogue for the length of the almost two and a half hour film, and his face is covered in mud and hidden behind a long dirty beard. DiCaprio conveys his emotions with his eyes and his body. When he feels cold, we feel cold. When he suffers intense pain and agony, we suffer intense pain and agony.More The Revenant
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- 5610 VOTESPhoto: DisneyThe classic Disney tale tells the story of a deer who loses his mother and must find a way to survive in the world without her. We watch as Bambi makes friends, learns how to find food, survives a harsh winter, and even falls in love. The tale is timeless and the dialogue is limited.More Bambi
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- 6577 VOTESPhoto: Warner Bros, MGM
Stanley Kubrick's legendary sci-fi vision of evolution is not supposed to be easy to understand. There is no dialogue during the first 25 minutes of the film, and no dialogue during the last 23 minutes.
During an interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick was asked about the absence of dialogue in 2001, and he explained, "It's not a message I ever intended to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only a little less than 40 minutes of dialogue. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to explain a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation."- #104 of 252 onThe 200+ Best Psychological Thrillers Of All Time
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- 7414 VOTESVideo: YouTube
Ryan Gosling plays an unnamed Hollywood stuntman by day and a getaway driver for his pulse-racing illegal moonlight gig by night. Drive is an atmospheric neo-noir with jaw-dropping, unapologetic violence. One of the most revered scenes from the film (clip above) features Gosling and his love interest Irene (Cary Mulligan) in a tension-filled elevator scene that will make you sweat, all without the benefit of a single word of dialogue.
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A young boy, Pascal, finds a red balloon wrapped around a lamppost while walking to school one morning. He unwraps the balloon and in return the red balloon follows him wherever he goes. The 34-minute short won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1956 (the only short film to receive this prestigious award), despite having virtually no dialogue. The film became a popular elementary school teaching device and for a time was screened in nearly every school in America.
Children's author Brian Selznick explains the allure of the film, "As a child, I longed for two specific things that I now realize Lamorisse’s movie embodies: the presence of a loving friend and the knowledge that real magic exists in the world."More The Red Balloon- #65 of 79 onThe Best Oscar-Winning Screenplays
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- 9395 VOTESPhoto: Paramount, MiramaxThere are long stretches of absolutely no dialogue in Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 epic adaptation There Will Be Blood. In fact, the first line of dialogue doesn't come until nearly five minutes into the film, with the word, "no," then, "there she is." The next words are not spoken until 15 minutes into the film. Anderson, one of the visionary auteur filmmakers of modern cinema, told EW, "I always had a dream about trying to make a movie that had no dialogue in it, that was just music and pictures. I still haven't done it yet, but I tried to get close in the beginning of There Will Be Blood."More There Will Be Blood
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- 10254 VOTESPhoto: United Artists, SonyA young boy, Alec (Kelly Reno), survives a shipwreck after being dragged safely to shore by a black Arabian stallion. The boy and horse are the ship's only survivors. During the film's segment on the island, before they are rescued, there is little dialogue, as Alec slowly gains the trust of the wild stallion. The pair become inseparable friends and need each other to survive.More The Black Stallion
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- 11504 VOTESPhoto: Gravity/Warner Brothers / Amazon / Fair UseDialogue is definitely the least important aspect in Alfonso Cuarón's Academy Award-winning film. The sci-fi 3D spectacle is filled with beautiful cinematic eye candy that will please even the most hard to impress film spectator. Of course, there is dialogue between Ryan (Sandra Bullock) and Matt (George Clooney) at the beginning of the film as they try to figure out how to survive in space, but for most of the film, Ryan is all alone. She's not even in touch with anyone from mission control to talk her through the ordeal.More Gravity
- 12249 VOTESPhoto: Fox Searchlight PicturesWild tells the biographical tale of a young damaged woman intent on eliminating her depression and bad behavior. Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon), an inexperienced hiker, embarks on a 1,100 mile solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail in a journey to heal her emotional scars. There are other characters in the film, but for most of the movie, the viewer watches as the protagonist struggles and battles her way to self-discovery.More Wild
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- 13228 VOTESPhoto: Lionsgate, Roadside, FilmNationIt's man versus nature in the truest sense in 2013's All Is Lost. An unnamed sailor (Robert Redford) battles a massive storm, the loss of nautical equipment, and his own advanced age in order to survive. There is absolutely no dialogue in the film, save for the opening voiceover, and no backstory, but it doesn't matter. The film is expertly shot and well-acted. Redford received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.More All Is Lost
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- 14255 VOTESPhoto: LionsgateThe Artist is a silent movie about the end of the silent movie era. Talkies, as they were called, were quickly taking over Hollywood in the 1920s and silent era movie stars were rapidly becoming obsolete. The 2011 film won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, however, some audience members felt duped and many even demanded their money back, because the film had absolutely no dialogue except for its ending.More The Artist
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- 15172 VOTESPhoto: Warner Bros.Terrence Malick's feature debut tells the violent tale of a greaser named Kit (Martin Sheen) from the wrong side of the tracks and his love affair with teenage Holly (Sissy Spacek). The film speaks with its extreme violence as the pair embark on a killing spree after Kit murders Holly's father. Malick films the South Dakota badlands with a poetic, lyrical camera that juxtaposes the movie's intense savagery.More Badlands
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- 16169 VOTESPhoto: HBO Films, Fine LineDirector Gus Van Sant's film response to the Columbine shooting features a day in the life of several high school students. We watch as normal kids go about their day totally unaware that two fellow students are planning a mass murder. The film won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, and is largely told with Van Sant's wandering camera and limited dialogue.More Elephant
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- 17188 VOTESPhoto: Fox Searchlight, Icon Productions, EuropaCorpPerhaps no director tells a story with lyrical images quite like the divisive Terrence Malick. Tree of Life's opening features a 20-minute, dialogue-free sequence that depicts the creation of the universe. The film is told with sounds and pictures and there is little plot, instead choosing to examine the meaning of life. When the film was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival and was received with both boos and applause. Tree of Life has the ability to either totally alienate a viewer or completely immerse them in Malick's visual world.More The Tree of Life
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Matt Damon and Casey Affleck star in Gus Van Sant's Gerry. The two friends go for a hike in the wilderness one day, but become lost, without any food, water, or a compass. Days pass as the friends become dehydrated and totally annoyed with each other to the point that they barely speak. Gerry is not only a film with limited dialogue, there is also virtually no plot, except for the simple one outlined above.
Rogert Ebert wrote in his review of the film that half of the people who sat down to screen the movie at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002 walked out of the theater before the film's conclusion. Gerry is that kind of divisive film. - 190 VOTESPhoto: Sasquatch SunsetMore Sasquatch Sunset
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