Stumm.
Silencieux (not that Francophones have difficulties with my name).
Shhh.
Listen to it.
The composer most closely associated with silence is, of course, John Cage (although my professor for undergraduate harmony at SUNY Stony Brook, Jack Lessard, told us it was Ludwig van Beethoven who first said the most beautiful thing in music is silence).
A recent viewing of Fassbinder's Die bittere Tränen der Petra von Kant
(thanks to Cinemateket USF)
has inspired me to begin a list of film, television, stage, and other acting rolls
featuring silent performers. The list is currently short, but keep the
suggestions
coming in, folks.
(Rolls in silent movies will not normally be considered, unless the part was
in some way mute over and above the lack of audible dialog inherent in the medium.
Rolls that are in essence silent, but in which speech or other audible in some
exceptional circumstance occurs, are included.)
So, without further ado...
| Ada | The Piano | Film (1993, Drama/Romance) | The mute wife of an arranged and dismal marriage, played by Holly Hunter. The film that also made Michael Nyman famous. |
| Chief Bromden | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Film (1975, Drama/Comedy, based on the novel by Ken Kesey) | Silent for only the first half of the movie, pretending to be deaf/mute is the Chief's way of maintaining his sanity in an asylum for the mentally disturbed. |
| King Sextimus | The Princess and the Pea | Musical | I will need to check the name. The mute king, brow-beaten by his overbearing queen, regains his speech at the very end of the story, but it takes a miracle for this to happen. (Tag: "..and I've got a lot to say!") |
| Harpo Marx | Every Marx Brothers Show Made | Comedy/Musical | Harpo's trademarks where his silence, his whistling, playing charades, and his harp... |
| Maggie Simpson | The Simpsons | Television series (animation) | Has, on rare occasions, made various baby noises
(spoken by Yeardly Smith; on one occasion a synthesizer is reported to have been used). Said "Daddy" (her first word) in one episode, I will look up the details |
| Marlene | Die bittere Tränen der Petra von Kant | Feature-length film. | Perhaps the most consistently silent roll in film. |
| Rhonda (Rhonda Parker) |
The Avengers | Television Series (tongue-in-cheek espionage) |
Rhonda was introduced during Tara King series as an assistant to the wheelchair-bound Mother. Her first appearance was in the episode "All done with mirrors." We hear Rhonda emit a sentence in "Noon Doomsday" but this is voiced-over basso profundo used a as a gag. |
| Sooty | The Sooty Show | Television series for children | Sooty is a silent bear, who is accompanied on his adventures by his friends Sweep (a dog) and Sue (a panda). |