The Birds.
It’s lack of a score is so eerie and creates awkward silence, in a good way, for many scenes.
Cries and Whispers
Haha Josh took the words out of my type.
I seriously was about to add The Birds but then I checked something, came back, refreshed it, and you had posted it.
I love how Bernard Hermann told Hitchcock not to have a score and to only use bird noises. It shows how unegotistical he was and how he just wanted a good movie to be made.
All of the Tsai films I’ve seen are notable.
No Country For Old Men has a soundtrack… it’s extremely slight, but adds a lot to certain scenes (the coin flip scene has some very eerie, but almost silent, violins, I think)
Samantha wins.
Drew: I was actually worried someone would beat me to it, it’s the essential non-soundtrack film. ;)
The fact that there is no score makes those bird sounds extremely effective. Those sounds without an interfering soundtrack makes them stand out much more and it’s as if Hitchcock’s trying to say, ‘This is a real world and thus there is no ’omniscient’ music’. :)
Christopher: I have to see Cries and Whispers again, but I do think there was a soundtrack though it’s only used in a couple scenes.
Dog Day Afternoon (I know, I know, the Elton John song, but still…)
Oooooh, love this topic. I love Abbas Kiarostami’s films that have no music until the very end, Close-Up, Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us stand out. Of course, there’s also Samuel Beckett’s Film
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
I’m pretty sure there’s no soundtrack to it—don’t remember hearing any music.
Le Dernier Combat (English title: The Last Battle) by Luc Besson, his first film (1983) featuring Jean Reno in a post-apocalyptic tale shot in black and white. Famous for having no dialogue throughout the entire film. And only two minutes of music.
Re: No Country For Old Men
The excerpts from the score are hosted here for free: http://www.carterburwell.com/projects/NCFOM.html
“The Passenger”
After a gorgeous title theme, YELLOW SKY has no background score.
(One could cite a number of early sound films, but it was less an artistic decision then. Initially dubbing was impossible and then for awhile studio execs worried that the audience would wonder where the music was coming from.)
THE BIRDS actually does have a score, but a very unconventional one. The bird noises (and it’s never been revealed how they were created other than “not electronically”) were manipulated by Bernard Herrmann, not simply laid on. Herrmann gets a credit for Sound Design or something along those lines. He brought his musicians ear to the process.
I hate to be that picky little bastard…but a film with no soundtrack is a silent film; the thread refers to films without a music score, I take it. It’s an easy mistake to make.
Harry: That’s true, but I don’t think I’d consider the bird sounds as a ‘score’ rather than as sound effects.
For “The Birds”, Herrmann used a Trautonium, a better version of the Theremin, which was used by him on “Forbidden Planet”, to extend the sound construction. There is no musical score or music cues. There is only electronic augmentation of natural sounds.
Herrmann didn’t write the score for FORBIDDEN PLANET, did he? Was he involved in the score?
No, he didn’t. I meant to write “The Day The Earth Stood Still”. “FP” was done by Louis and Bebe Barron.
Network and Dog Day Afternoon benefit from their lack of a score.
>>I hate to be that picky little bastard…but a film with no soundtrack is a silent film<<
I hate being that picky little bastard even more, which is why I didn’t post the samething.
>>There is no musical score or music cues.<<
But it was planned out in advance … Herrmann didn’t just make it up as he sat watching the movie.
And there is a good deal of avant garde music (such as John Cage’s) that isn’t written out – there is no way to notate just what a prepared piano (for instance) is going to do in performance. But such experiments – and some even more bizarre* – are still referred to by their creators as music, so I’m going to hold that Herrmann’s contribution to THE BIRDS is a score.
*Until recently (when I made room in my CD collection) I have a CD of “music” created by rubbing & otherwise manipulating a balloon. It’s the goddamnedest noise you ever heard, but it’s still considered music by some.
I don’t think Rosetta or l’enfant had any music
I agree, ‘Le Dernier Combat’ (English title: The Last Battle) by Luc Besson is probably one of the most affective – ‘silent’ films ever made.
Michael Haneke should be commended here, his work from ‘Cache’ (English title: Hidden) or even ‘Funny Games U.S.’ prove that silence is golden, especially with the sense of reality being turned on its head. With a soundtrack these films would be very different.
The China Syndrome.
And technically, Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’.
As the soundtrack is diagetic enviornment sounds…
Um, THE BIRDS. That’s not hard.
Hitchcock and Hermann didn’t even use only bird sounds (if any it all, assuming I’m remembering correctly) — if you listen, they’re mostly screeching, cat-like sounds. Not even birds, but it gets the point across, more effectively than the use of birds probably would have. How’s that for innovativeness?
The Birds, the lack of music creates a chilling effect
Network…doesn’t need one
leah
So a great soundtrack can completely validate a film, but I just watched Wendy and Lucy and I LOVED that they didn’t use a soundtrack. It gave the film a whole different feel. They didn’t whimsify (I just made that word up) anything. I realized the effect of not having a soundtrack last year (or I guess almost 2 years ago) as well with No Country for Old Men. And it was interesting because There Will Be Blood used its music PERFECTLY, but No Country just didn’t seem to need any. Just a thought…Are there more films that effectively don’t use any music?