> Okay, I can't believe nobody's nominated the end to the pre-credits ski chase from The Spy Who Loved Me.

OH MY GOODNESS, yes. Brilliant. I was just mentioning in this forum about how that's such a classic moment in the series.

By contrast, though, Goldeneye has a great example of how NOT to use silence. I absolutely despised the "musical" score to that movie. Whatever idiot thought Eric Serra could do Bond was on something.

Anyway, the pre-credits scene to Goldeneye has a similar moment but botched. Bond drives a motorcycle off a cliff, catches a plummeting plane on the way down, and will he get control of the thing and pull up in time?

The plane vanishes behind a ledge, and the soundtrack is quiet. Did he make it? Yes! The plane is zooming back up into view again!

And the soundtrack is STILL DEAD. There's no sense of triumph, just, "Ok, well, he's not dead, of course." Cut to the opening credits.

That was EXACTLY THE MOMENT the familiar James Bond theme should have taken off. When I saw the movie with Dave, he told me he was *expecting* it at the time. But Serra, or director Martin Campbell, or *somebody* just completely screwed that up.

> Silence can draw out a scene and slow the passing of time, especially when combined with characters in frozen positions, or in dire peril, because there's absolutely nothing with which to estimate how long this has all been going on.

That's a good point. This is diverging from the topic of sound and silence: your comment about characters in frozen positions brought to mind a subtle but, when you think about it, really inspired bit of staging. In the film version of "My Fair Lady," there's an early morning overhead shot of the streets of London (well, one of them), deserted. People slowly awake and amble out to their places of business. Then, accompanied by a trill on the soundtrack, they freeze in place. Then some more people emerge from their houses, wheeling carts or lugging merchandise, and then they freeze. And again. Then, all of a sudden, *all* of them start moving again, as if nothing had happened.

The effect? The impression of the passage of one or two hours. Amazing. Seriously: it's amazing. It's amazing how the human brain can observe something that's completely wrong and unreal and yet still understand its intended meaning.