The Sounds of Silence: The Power of What We Don’t Hear or See or Why I Hate When People Make Noise During Screenings

Throughout this course, we have observed that in many of the films we’ve looked at, some of the greatest moments have been delivered by the absence of information—whether it’s visual or aural. In The Parallax View, director Alan Pakula and DP Gordon Willis’s widescreen images often fail to offer focal points that allow the viewer a clear idea of where to look, what to pay attention to, and what’s really going on. In The Long Goodbye, directed by Robert Altman, we discovered that long takes combined with overlapping dialogue create a similar effect, often disorienting us, confusing us and prohibiting us from knowing with any certainty that we are “getting” it.

Our recent screenings of Jaws and last week’s Taxi Driver again reminded me of the power of holding back. In Jaws, we are not visually introduced to the shark until about halfway through the film. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know him or what he can do. In the opening sequence, which is perhaps, for me, one of the most horrific scenes in the film, the shark wreaks his havoc on a young, hippie swimmer. All we see is her upper body writhing around in the water, while we imagine the terror below in all its glorious gore. Of course, a big part of the scene’s power is John Williams’ score, introduced in this early sequence. From that point on in the story, even a few notes evoke a Pavlovian reaction: the viewer, still having not officially made the acquaintance of our killer shark, continues to feel his presence and react to his potential for terror.

In Taxi Driver, a film known for its intense violence and for its director Martin Scorsese’s seeming comfort with guns and the bloody fallout from using them on another human being, the most violent scene in the film is one without a drop of blood. For me, there is no scene more violent than the one in which a male passenger, played by Scorsese himself, forces the taxi driver, Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) to watch the silhouette of his adulterous wife in the illuminated window of her lover’s apartment. During this scene, we, like Bickle, are trapped in the cab and must listen to this sicko as he describes what he’s going to do to his wife. Once again, it’s the absence—in this case, dialogue—Bickle speaks no more than a word or two—that creates the tension.

In terms of emotional resonance, I similarly find myself most moved by some of the film’s quieter scenes, those without splashy displays of action, overt violence or big moments. For example, the scene when Travis calls Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) after their aborted date, the camera stays with Travis for a long take covering most of his painful conversation, and then pans to the adjacent empty hallway, leaving Travis behind. We hear the rest of the conversation, but we are no longer privileged to see it. Perhaps Scorsese is protecting his hero, saving him from further humiliation. There’s a part of me that feels relieved when the camera pans away, as if I shouldn’t have been watching this man on his way down in the first place. I decided to go back to the screenplay to see how writer Paul Schrader envisioned this scene. Interestingly, even in the final shooting script, there is really no hint of this choice. This seems to be an example of Scorsese at his directorial best.

So now to the second part of this post: Why I Hate When People Make Noise During Screenings. As a film lover, it just doesn’t sit well with me when someone is crinkling wrappers, texting or talking during a movie. While this is going on, it’s inevitable that this viewer (and the ones around him or her) are missing something—not necessarily a line of dialogue or an exciting piece of action—but rather a great moment between lines of dialogue or the curious shot that forces you to hunt for information and meaning. We’ve already seen that many 70’s films, particularly the ones we’ve screened in class, are not easy films that spoon feed information. Rather, they are stories that require an active viewer who is paying attention—all the time.

Let’s also consider the artist behind the work. French New Wave pioneer Francois Truffaut once wrote—I’m paraphrasing here—that he thought of his film audiences as people he was having a conversation with. He was having a personal, intimate exchange with us when we watched one of his films. I like to think about all art this way. As artists, we want our audience to take in everything that we have worked so hard to create. I’m a writer. Imagine if someone read a story I wrote, but for whatever reason, skipped over a couple of sentences, or even words—sentences and words that probably took me days or weeks or even months to fine tune into something I was proud of and ready to share with the world. And because of this, I think we owe the person who created this work a certain amount of respect. We need to listen and watch, to soak up all of it, and not miss even one second. Who knows? The moment we didn’t see or hear could be loaded with emotion, power and meaning.

I understand that some people may not agree with me on this, and that they may have a different take. That’s fine. I invite them to talk to me about it—just not during the movie.