Abstract (eng)
This thesis deals with silence and stillness and how they are used as aesthetical and dramaturgical elements in films. In this respect, the following two questions are of importance: When and where are silence and stillness used in films? Why are they used to affect the recipients and what are their effects?
Chapter 2 analyses silence and stillness in their general linguistic and social context: Silence turns out to be mostly communicative silence, as it is almost impossible not to communicate. Based upon theories on cinematic language and spoken language in films, selected films are analysed in the major part of this thesis, starting with chapter 4.
The analysis of Charles Chaplin’s The Kid shows that silence can already be examined in silent films. As conversations are visible in films, their abscence can be recognized too. Verbal language, even though it can only be seen and not heard, comes to a standstill in silent films too, in contrast to body language, which always remains in motion.
Furthermore, Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence (Das Schweigen) and Persona are analysed: Here, communication fails constantly; loneliness is accompanied by speechlessness. “The silent ones” are filmed in close-up views. Gestures and facial expressions convey more than words.
In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Vertigo, conflicts are settled in silence: Silent scenes create tension. Almost always, the actors’ body language expresses more than their words. In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 communication fails completely: There is hardly any talking, and if there is any, it is reduced to empty phrases. By this, Kubrick wants to depict the superflousness of words in the year 2001.
In Michael Haneke’s Caché and Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon), communication also fails totally. Silent scenes are formative. The children use their silence to defend themselves. Haneke’s camera work is calm and very static.
In the analysed films, there is almost always something depressing about silence and stillness, but at the same time also something eerily fascinating. In all films, silence is used purposefully, it manages to create a certain dramatic atmosphere and to guide the audience, without the help of a dialogue. In a film, it is easy to explain something through words, but it takes a very talented director to convey something through silence and stillness. In the broadest sense, the dramaturgy of silence is always an expression of distrust, of scepticism about language. It is only in silence that the characters reveal their true identity, and only stillness lets us sense an imminent disaster. Silence turns into a universal language. The spoken word pales in comparison to silence, which is able to convey something without the help of speech.