A Scream from Silence (1979) User Reviews

A moving, disturbing statement.

[homogenik · 8/10 · 29 March 2002]

As deranging as it may be, this film is a landmark and to me represents a decisive moment in Quebec cinema, taking the feminist movement to the screen with violence and truth. Those willing to sit through the first 15 minutes, a long, harsh rape scene shot through the eyes of the victim, will discover a thoroughly disturbing and highly human piece of cinematic art.

Have you ever screamed in the silence? Do you know how it feels?

[zhiminhu · 9/10 · 2 November 2005]

A stunning movie is not only for 1979 but also for 2005.

The movie shares the feeling of the women who suffer rape and the consequence. It is very shocking. And the vision is not limited in Quebec but also the world. Not only the Quebecoise suffers the sexual violence but also the women in Africa, in France, and in Vietnam. What is the worst is the consequence of the rape and the social ignorance of the protection for victim.

It is a fictional documentary but it is even more convinced and powerful than documentary itself. The filmmaker is very smart and skillful to present many aspects in such a limited space. Most of the victims keep silent because they feel ashamed of themselves. That is one of the reasons why seldom people understand them and thus can help them. This film offers a space for victim to speak out their feeling and also for audience to know about the violence and its consequence.

It is one of my favorite films.

Classsic 70's feminist screed

[p-gonzo · 5/10 · 21 November 2006]

I saw this at a film festival years ago. At the same time feminists were decrying harsh pornographic images, the National Film Board of Canada found it okay for feminist filmmakers to use the same type of imagery to target the evildoers! Not A Love Story is one example - featuring hardcore footage -- and this is another. The movie opens with a depiction of confinement, rape, and urination on the female that could have been ripped from some exploitation picture. But of course here the images are used for a good purpose so it's okay. There is also rather bombastic though efffective use of stock footage from war and ethnography, as well as recreations which are suggested as part of stock footage. Feminists today may look at the film from a slightly different perspective, as promoting the sense of total victimhood. This film is also dated by the then-orthodox view that rape is strictly a crime of violence and not actually sexual, whereas later feminists such as Paglia dismiss this vew. There are many suspect aspect of this docudrama is the presentation of the actor playing the rapist as many other males in society. The suggestion is that any man -- or everyman -- is a rapist. And getting back to exploitation -- it is amazing there was no concern expressed over the filmmakers inclusion of young girls in the film, marched out with heads bowed while a group of women describe comprehensively how they (the girls) have all been raped in society.

In sum, this film is all over the place, using subjective camera techniques to create a high- impact sense of violent sexaul assault by a man, then pulling back to present the female filmmakers discussing the scene in clinical terms, then jumping into classic documentary propaganda technique, before immersing itself in stylized theatrical scenes of women describing rape in ultimate terms (the crime is worse than war victims, we are informed), before going back into the fictional realism that started the movie -- adroitly mirroring the image of the lead female after being raped with an image of her after her male partner tries to make love to her a few weeks later. Then an additonal mirroring image is used to reinforce the message that this woman is defined by rape in life, and then she kills herself. But even then it is not over for the viewer - a message about women wearing whistles is followed by whistle sounds emanating from every nook and cranny in society, before they are sonically married with sounds of war sirens to drive home the message that rape is everywhere and the situation is a state of siege.

This film may well be anti-male -- the rapist's statement that when he was 13 he and his buddies wanted to and tried to rape a girl proves that -- but it is also anti-female.

An Upsetting, Yet Sympathizable Piece of Work

[caidenhayes · 9 June 2023]

The makers of this film did a great job presenting the different types of rape and how rape affects women, because ever since watching this film, I have felt much sympathy for raped women and have been warned against being a rapist (not that I ever would have). This drama film had me tied up very tight in the shoes of the rape victims, especially in those of the children presented in the court scene, which glued my eyes to the screen and had me eager to watch to the end. However, I initially wanted to watch this movie because I thought it would be more thrilling and horrific than upsetting, but after realizing the truth about the tone and mood of this movie, I had favored it even more than I would have thought.