>> Speaker 1: Everybody loves good cinematography, but
sound is half the movie.
These are the top ten sound designed films of all time.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Kicking us off at number ten we're looking at war films.
Often some of the most intensely designed sound scapes happen on the battlefield.
And while Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty sound great for their use of sound, and
Blackhawk Down for its creative lack thereof,
there's no battle more intense than those from Saving Private Ryan.
Designed by the like of Gary Rydstrom, who also gave us Terminator Two and
Jurassic Park,
the sound of Saving Private Ryan is one of the key vehicles of it's storytelling.
In a film where the visual perspective is as subjective and
limited as the POV of just one character, it was up to Rydstrom to create
the massive soundscape of an entire war that was foregone on camera.
Steven Spielberg approached Gary from the get go with the mandate that the film
must not sound Hollywood.
And we probably all know what that means.
Can sounds, ridiculous gun shots, and that weird Wilhelm scream.
Spielberg and Rystrom instead set out to get World War II right and
capture the sounds authentically, not just from a sonic perspective, but
for emotional one as well.
And nowhere this is more apparent than any massive battles that evoke in the film.
>From the sounds of the shell shot to bobbing up and
down between the chaos of battle and the cocoon of the ocean,
to the looming sounds of dread me by the approaching tanks Saving Private Ryan
nails it, which is why we think that this movie is definitely worth a listen.
[NOISE] Next up, at number nine,
we're looking at some very memorable nautical warfare.
And while we almost picked Master in Commander for this spot, because just
listen to that battle, out pick actually goes under the surface with Das Boot.
Yes, nothing quite matches the claustrophobic echo chamber that is
this 1981 German submarine epic.
And what better vehicle to honor on our list than the one that sees with sound.
The credit here goes to the team of Milan Bor, Trevor Pyke, and Mike Le Mare,
along with a shout out to Karen N Baker for the updated director's cut which, by
the way, is the version you should watch if you're going to check this film out.
One of the astounding things here is that all of the sound for
this film was added in post.
The gyroscopes on the camera rig they used to run through the narrow set hand held
were too loud to capture sound, so they just redid pretty much all of it.
And they did a hell of a job.
Between the every day ambiance of a working submarine and the intense suspense
that goes along with waiting out an underwater attack completely unable to see
what's coming with only noises to tell the crewmen they're fate.
Das Boot plays like a horrifying orchestra of naval warfare, and
for that, we love it.
>> [SOUND]
[MUSIC]
[FOREIGN] >> Speaker 1: Next,
we're winding back to look at a classic.
And while Citizen Kane scores points in every category,
the Jazz Singer deserves mention for being the first in it's kind and
The Birds made terrifying use of sound.
Our number eight goes to the incredible early suspense created by sound
in Fritz Lang's, M.
Lang's favorite movie and his first with sound.
He famously took a far more experimental approach to audio than many other
directors of the era, who took the term talkies literally, and
filled most of their running time with chatter.
In fact, M is only two thirds of talkie with one third silent, but
it's all the better for it.
One of its best sequences is entirely without sound.
It was all the more powerful for its contrast.
Lang pioneered so
many techniques that are standard today rewatching it often feels very modern.
Voice over narration, intercut dialog, and mixing sounds and
visuals from completely different times and places, seem like they belong more in
a movie in theaters today than in the 1930s, but Lang was far ahead of his time.
Most famously, Lang used the whistle tune of In the Hall of the Mountain King
as a leitmotif to stand in for the murderer and his actions.
So that even the sound of his whistle evoked his presence, and thus,
our suspense.
Credit here goes to Paul Falkenberg and Adolf Jansen for
incredibly mature sound editing in a picture that was released just four
years after the first sound feature.
And a film that showed the world that movies
weren't just a medium on the visual.
>> [MUSIC]
[FOREIGN] [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: At number seven,
we're turning to the haunting
sounds of Andre Tchaikowsky.
And while Salaris deserves an honorable mention,
our pick goes to Stalker.
What is there to say about Stalker?
The sound shifts in and out of what we would call reality in every scene.
Time turns back on itself and with it the sounds of the world.
Tchaikowsky paints with sound and much like he does with visuals,
impressionistically, subconsciously, artistically.
He reels a massive array of techniques and
uses them to create an experience rather than concrete communication.
Sound is divorced from image and then jarringly tied back to it.
It often lingers, sometimes returns, and might even come from nowhere at all.
The sound effects are composed much like the score.
There's a musical quality about them.
An atmosphere to them.
Emotions over logic.
Stalker is sound as art, which is why it is right up there with any must hear list.
[SOUND]
Moving onto number six, we've got to give it to Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped.
One of the greatest examples of sound artistry ever,
Bresson takes his unique philosophy on the interplay between sound and picture and
delivers an astoundingly tense and intimate escape story.
An exercise in quiet, Bresson's sparse use of dialogue and
focus instead on voiceover monologue, draws us into the character.
As Bresson has said, the eye draws us outwards while the ear draws us inwards.
And deeply inwards we go, because there isn't much out.
We see only what Fontaine sees.
Know only what he knows, and he is a prisoner in a cell, so
he communicates with taps and coughs, listens closely for approaching guards,
and tries desperately to cover the sounds of his preparations.
Lest he be heard and exposed.
The effect is intensely focusing, as if by leaning in closer and
closer to hear what Fontaine is hearing, we lean into the heart of the character,
and experience it as him.
As the film goes on, as we build up a sonic vocabulary with Bresson, even
less is shown and more is heard, drawing us deeper and deeper into the experience.
Joseph Abjean, Pierre-Andre Bertrand and
Guy Rophe gave us the wonderful sound design here.
Culminating in the 15 minute escape sequence that most notably features
the intensity of Fountaine listening to a passing guard as he contemplates
the murder he must commit.
And when it finally comes,
even the sounds of it are masked by the loud passing of a train.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 2: Gotta admit one thing.
Can't beat the view.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 2: So what do you like
about being up here?
>> Speaker 3: The silence.
>> Speaker 1: Next up at number five,
we have to honor the incredible sounds of science fiction.
Forbidden Planet revolutionized the genre with the fantastical sounds of
future even before the existence of synthesizers.
2001: A Space Odyssey combined the beauty of the silence of space with
the massive sounds of Brahms to breathtaking effect.
And Alien built a terrifyingly dreadful ambience that
hung over the film like a sonic smog.
But our number five goes to the movie that took the sound of a vacuum literally and
created the most immersive out of this world experience yet with Gravity.
>From the very beginning, Glenn Freemantle set out to be true to space.
There's no sound in a vacuum.
There is, however, vibrational sound that comes from two objects touching.
The result was a total new way to listen to the world.
Loud winning contact, and complete silent otherwise.
The audience is introduced to this new type of cinematic experience, and
an incredible 13 minute long shot that starts the film.
And while it might be foreign, it's captivating, and it's alright.
One of the things that keeps coming up on our lists is that the best sound a movies
are the ones that find creative uses for quiet.
Lots of movies have sent audience shaking with one big explosion after another, but
it is those that make you lean in to hear a whisper before
throwing you back with a yell that seem to be the most successful.
That concept is built in with Gravity.
Recorded on contact and
underwater microphones, nothing about Gravity's approach to sound was generic.
The sound effects are combined with the ultra intimate approach to
the radio mics on the characters, the result is incredible.
>> Speaker 4: Houston, I've lost visual Dr. Stall.
Houston, I've lost visual of Dr. Stall.
>> Speaker 1: But if there's one sci fi film we haven't mentioned it's coming
up next with our number four, it's gotta be Star Wars.
[NOISE] Ben Burtt is the man to thank for this film.
And also, quite possibly,
one of the original pioneers of modern sound and cinema.
He combined the jobs of sound recorder, sound editor, and
sound mixer into something that wasn't quite any of them.
But more of a creative leader who shepherded the sound from start to finish
and in doing so, created the role of sound designer.
Still a graduate student at USC at the time, Burtt was given carte blanche to
work from his So Cal apartment, and took a year to gather all the sounds for
the film in order to achieve Lucas's idea of an organic sounding sci fi.
There would be no excess of digital synthesizers.
Instead the film would use real world sounds in unique ways so
that the worlds of Star Wars would sound half familiar, half alien.
He used punch presses for imperial walkers, elephants for TIE fighters,
walrus' for Wookies, and the hum of TVs and projectors for light sabers.
The result was as much out of this world as it was from it, and
because of it, in our book, Ben Burtt is a sound design legend.
[NOISE] After Star Wars Episode III,
Ben Burtt declared that he was done with robots after 29 years of them.
A week later he got a call for Wall-E.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: It ended up being one of the most extensive jobs he'd ever worked on.
Animation has a unique relationship with sound design.
Unlike live action, there's no production audio to go off of.
Every single sound is a work of fiction, just like the picture,
laid out with great detail and care.
And on top of that, Wall-E proceeds mostly without any dialog at all,
especially in the first thirty minutes.
It's just a few robots interacting with the world.
So sound effects naturally take on massive importance.
Instead of communicating with words,
Burtt had to device how to communicate with Wall-E's various squeaks.
How does a robot express concern without words?
Fear, sadness, or curiosity?
Burtt spent two years experimenting with different voice filters
in order to end up with the effect.
Ultimately, referencing the universal language of intonation
as spoken by toddlers.
In the end, Burtt created a massive sound library with unique personalities for
each robot.
Vintage mechanics for WALL-E, from hand cranked generators to automobile
self starters, and harmonic electronics for EVE.
>From radio controlled jets to the sound of slinkies, it's an awesome sounding film
and incredible achievement in communicating without words.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 5: I'm Bill.
>> Speaker 6: Hello, I'm Henry.
>> Speaker 7: Henry's at Lapel's factory.
>> Speaker 5: Printings your business?
Plumbings mine, 30 years.
I've seen this neighborhood change from pastures to the hell hole it is now.
I put every damn pipe in this neighborhood.
>> Speaker 1: If Wall-E is worthwhile for
its use of sound as communication, our number two is all about sound as a mood.
And for that, there's no pair more worth looking at than the combination of
David Lynch and Allen Splet.
Although their inspiration of Fincher and Ren Klyce, and the Coen Brothers and
their team, deserve honorable mentions.
Yes, Splet and Lynch have created some of the eeriest,
most chilling ambiances ever to hit a sound system.
And while the team did some excellent work on Dune and Blue Velvet,
there's nothing in the world like Eraserhead.
When Lynch set out to make Eraserhead, he didn't know much about film, and
he didn't know much about sound design either.
But he suspected that sound was just as important as imagery.
So he teamed up with Splet and
began going to work painting a dark and tortured soundscape.
They spent almost a year locked up in their soundproof stage,
experimenting with different sounds, dragging microphones across
various surfaces and then distorting them beyond comprehension.
They build up a massive library of unearthly noise and
layered it over a dozen tracks deep in order to build up the frightening,
industrial hellscape of Eraserhead.
Somewhere between reality and a dream world,
Lynch's surreal drones have been nightmare fuel in midnight screenings for decades.
>> [SOUND]
[MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: [SOUND] And finally at number one, there couldn't be
a sound design list without the godfather of sound,
Walter Murch, and he's got quite the resume.
But while Godfather II and Apocalypse Now top the list of his most famous credits,
there couldn't be any other pick for sound design but The Conversation.
It's a movie about sound, about listening,
about recording and editing audio, so it's only natural that there
are some incredible sound designs central to the story.
A lot of the genius of the conversation is in combining some of the effects we've
talked about earlier.
We hear how Harry Caul hears, and when the dialogue falls away in the second half of
the film we begin to pay more attention to the sounds of the little things.
In Murch's opinion, dialogue often holds all the mind's attention.
But when we get rid of it,
we are free to listen to the other sounds that make up the movie.
And so, we are drawn into listen over and over.
We repeat the tape, we relive the thematic audio, and obsess over it like Caul.
He fuels our concern, our fear, our paranoia much like his.
But as we've seen is the case,
what interests us most isn't what we do here, but what we don't.
And this is where the conversation really shines,
which is why we think it's the best sound designed film of all time.
>> Speaker 8: He'd kill us, if he got the chance.
>> Speaker 1: So what do you think?
Do you disagree with our choices?
Did we leave out one of your favorite sounding films?
Let us know in the comments below and
be sure to subscribe for
more Cinefix movie lists.
>> [MUSIC]