The members of the Pure Cinema Movement of the early 20th century understood  film and literature as two irreconcilably differing artistic forms. On the contrary,  I’ve always thought that beyond cosmetic details the two actually keep to very similar conventions. If you have ever attended a creative writing course then I’m sure that you’ll be familiar with the instructional adage that a storyteller should “show, don’t tell”. Ernest Hemingway certainly believed such an idea, commenting in what is often referred to as his Iceberg Theory that:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

The same can be said of the movies. When it works, a particular movie sequence can give an audience that feeling Hemingway described; that tone, that subtle character detail, that undefinable emotion. A picture (as the the cliche goes) tells a thousand words, and when you have 25 pictures moving per second on screen, we’re talking about a lot of filled pages.

During a period of downtime in the office work, my sound designer colleague and I sat – cups of tea in hand – in front of Youtube for a spot of film storytelling oneupmanship in which we took consecutive turns in selecting our favorite cinematic sequences that highlight the “show, don’t tell” principle. Here are 5 of the films that we looked at.

Atonement – Elegy for Dunkirk Scene

This unbroken steadicam shot, featuring a small village of extras and an on-form James Mcavoy is nothing short of magnificent. The cinematography, the camera work, the flow, the audio composition, mixing, the performances, all superb.

Russian Ark 

In the article Overlooked: Five Direly Underappreciated U.S Novels >1960, David Foster Wallace justified his inclusion of Blood Merdian (Cormac McCarthy) on the list with the simple line “Don’t even ask”.  The same applies here.

Rear Window – Opening 5 minutes

Perhaps one of the most cited expositional sequences in cinema history. Entire academic careers have been launched off the back of this opening sequence.

Old Boy – Fight Scene

Looking like a particularly difficult platformer video game level, this fight scene perfectly captures the extreme determination of the film’s protagonist. Armed with only a hammer, he fights his way through a gauntlet of thugs brandishing knives, clubs and baseball bats.

Snake Eyes – Opening sequence

Now, I should probably start out by saying that I’ve never really been much of a fan of Brian de Palma’s work, however, the 13 minute unbroken opening shot in his 1998 conspiracy thriller Snake Eyes is something to behold.