Today’s subject is Martin Scorsese and the art of silence.

Even though Scorsese is famous for his use of music, one of his best traits

is actually his deliberate and powerful use of silence.

In interviews he’s credited Frank Warner for helping him do this on Raging Bull.

--After a while, we had so many sound effects, we always talked about pulling

them out of the track and letting things go silent.

Again, like a numbing effect as if you were hit in the ear too many times.

Here’s a famous moment where Jake LaMotta sets himself up

almost a religious slaughter.

If you go through Scorsese’s filmography there are lots of interesting variations

on this concept. And you can actually compare him directly to others.

For instance, in the original Infernal Affairs,

this crucial story moment plays with music.

But for the remake

Regardless of which one you prefer, there’s a full course of study material

if you watch and compare these two films

Sometimes, Scorsese builds the entire film to a climax of sound

and then silence. This example is actually kinda extreme because

the loudest moment in the entire movie is immediately followed by the quietest.

Other times the silence is the central dramatic beat of the scene. Famously:

--How the fuck am I funny? What the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me.

Tell me what's funny.

--Get the fuck outta here, Tommy. If you go back through fifty years of

his career, you'll actually find a lot of fascinating ways of using silence

to heighten the subjectivity of a moment to make a creepy scene even creepier

to show us love at first sight

and to bring our happiness to a screeching halt.

Well, maybe not a total halt.

--I'm not leaving

--I'm not fucking leaving

I think best of all, these sound design choices derive from character.

The characters are all making important choices that will have consequences:

choosing to take the money choosing not to fight back,

choosing to hide their emotions choosing not to trust someone,

choosing to wait out the discomfort

choosing to get back in the game choosing to ignore that

they aren't wanted.

And because these moments are repeated sparingly and deliberately in each movie

the silence feels different and it’s tied to a different theme.

It also lets Scorsese build a cinematic structure around the use of sound.

For instance, in Raging Bull, almost every fight scene is actually preceded

by a quieter domestic moment.

This lets him do certain things like harsh cuts into punches.

But it also underscores the theme of the film, which is that the violence

in the ring is just an extension of the violence at home.

By the time he’s attacking his brother, you actually hear the same sounds

that you heard in the ring.

And it’s not just Scorsese who does this kind of cinematic structure.

For instance, Saving Private Ryan is bookended by two long battles.

And in each battle, we get moment like this.

At the beginning, we don’t know any of these people.

At the end, we know all of them.

Now, you might disagree with my interpretation here,

but I’m convinced this character knows he’s going to die, and in both moments,

he’s accepting that and continuing to fight.

And I think it's a great example using sound as an overall cinematic structure

for the whole film.

I do want to point out, this stuff isn’t just a matter of good sound mixing

though there is that. The sound mixers can’t do this stuff if you design the

movie with wall-to-wall dialogue, effects and music.

--I don't have anything against a film being loud

for a moment or two or a short period of time. I think that's appropriate

but if you have a sequence that's loud for 20 or 30 minutes

you've forgotten what it's like to be quiet and so

nothing really seems loud because everything is loud.

In popular cinema, writers and directors have moved away from having

any silence at all, or misusing the silence they do have.

And this is something that gets appreciably worse each year.

Consider. 1978.

You might find that a bit cheesy, but at least this movie is willing

to use silence to make us feel the character’s loss.

And it’s willing to stay with him through that entire silence.

Meanwhile, in 2013

This might seem silent but there’s always music underneath.

More importantly the “not-quite-silence” is used to reward the character:

he murders someone and gets a hug. But if you watch the whole movie

literally ever time there’s silence, he gets a hug.

So consider your silences and deploy them deliberately.

Don’t cheapen them by overusing them for any dramatic scene.

If you can build the film, structure it, so that the silence derives

from your characters and what they’re feeling, then you get

something better than just silence: an emotional reaction

--Which would be worse?

To live as a monster or to die as a good man?

--Teddy?

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