Interesting scenes to teach body language and communication skills

Hi everyone!

As a teacher and a movie lover, I have found a great activity, and I hope you will help me prepare it. For that, I need a list of great movie scenes that children can understand even without understanding the language. This is to teach them about non-verbal communication.

Here is a little description of the activity. We are going to watch the clips together, and they will have to pick up on the body language and the situation, to try and decide what it was all about and discuss it together. Then, they will do the scenes themselves using their own dialogues, and maybe a few props.

Of course, I would like the scenes to be visually interesting, and to make them want to know more about the movie in question. They should be well directed so that the body language can be easily read, or at least the context should be clear enough that the kids can understand what is going on.

I would also like to have a great variety of scenes from many genres (humour, drama, horror, etc...) and languages (Russian, English, Japanese ... anything but French, which is their mother tongue)

Here is a little list I already compiled

- The Funny How scene from Goodfellas
- The boat-pulling scene from Fitzcarraldo
- The dinner scene from American Beauty

What other scenes do you have in mind that I can use ? This is for educational purposes, so you can freely provide me with YT links if the rules of the board do not forbid it.

That's a good one, I'll try to think of more.

There's a very simple scene in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy where,

There are surly better moments, but Amon Goeth's veiled suspicion in Schindler's List comes to mind.

Erk, forgot this is for kids. Probably not overt enough.

An example I quite like is from Star Trek: Insurrection, where a character's whole manner tells you exactly what his real intentions are :

Hey, thank you all for your ideas and quick responses.
Any ideas for foreign films ? What about horror ?

AHA!

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I just watched that without sound and concentrated on what she was doing. Even simple things like brushing her hair away from her face or her impatience as she's waiting for the door to raise.

Anything with Klaus Kinski's probably a safe bet. Running around the deck like a maniac or ringing the bell in the tower in Fitzcarraldo. He's like a silent film actor in a talkie. And he'd double up for horror, with great body language in Nosferatu the Vampyre.

I'll give you a couple of other recommendations – Jeremy Brett in Sherlock Holmes. I can't think of anyone who had as much precise control over his facial expression (or even just expression) as Brett. He's astounding. There's a particularly good bit in The Final Problem:



I'd also highly recommend Krister Henriksson in Wallander. He does so much just with economical facial expressions. The actors all seem of a tremendous calibre in Scandinavia, mostly because nothing seems fake or forced.

On that subject, Ian Holm in Alien is another fantastic example. Obviously there's all the android ticks that he used but he also shows very humanlike emotions and consequently body language.

SiB, I loved watching Ian Holm's performance in Alien also. One moment I really liked was when he ran in place really fast for just a few seconds. After knowing what he really was at the end, it's neat to see it again and realize that he's probably running in place faster than the average human, but I don't know if there's a record or fastest human time for that.

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It's good isn't it, that moment . Ridley Scott mentions it on his first commentary if I remember rightly, and there's also that funny little mouth movement he does just before he looks through the microscope. I took the on-the-spot 'jogging' to be a way of Ash warming himself up, a bit like a 'restart' , or to get that milky blood circulating.

He's great, Ian Holm. I read his autobiography a year or so ago and it was very good. He tells a brilliant story about John Hurt on set, relating to the chestburster scene:

One scene that may genuinely be useful is the scene in The Company of Wolves where Rosaleen meets the Huntsman — it's actually my favourite ever scene. It's extremely visually interesting and the body language is absolutely vital to how it unfolds. This is in no small part due to the fact that Micha Bergese, a dancer, brings with him that extra finish to his physical movements, and he does some really clever things in close-up as well.

Actually I don't know what it says about me that my two favourites are 'seduction' scenes , the other being Darkness's arrival in Legend.

We mentioned Ian Holm in Alien and the bit that stands out is where, in an interestingly shot scene, Ripley starts asking Ash awkward questions while he's examining the embryo. Ridley Scott pretty much keeps the focus on Ash and there's plenty of body language and changes in voice to make it clear how irritated the character is by Ripley's presence.

Hey, thank you all again for those great ideas. I will definitely let you know how it went out.

Plus, it's always great to remember good performances and to talk about the great actors of times past and present. So thank you for that too

Hey, I've got another one for those interested.

I just watched Boyhood, and I absolutely loved it. There's this scene when Mason comes home quite late, and a bit drunk. His mother has a glass of wine in her hand, and asks him if he's been drinking, and he answers "have you ?" - to which she laughs and answers "well, a little bit".
There is a subtle flicker of smugness in the boy's eyes that I find wonderful, when he later confesses to smoking "a little bit". He knows he's won the argument, and he can safely go to sleep.

So, as promised, I thought I'd give you an update on how it went.

I did not actually host the activity myself, but I had prepared it for a collegue of mine. I had compiled a dozen clips for her to choose from, and those were the three she selected :







I think it was a good selection. I love that she chose the Boyhood scene, because the kids were there to prepare themselves for secondary school. Sort of a one-week summer camp about growing up, if you will.
I had selected the Limits of Control bit, because its director Jim Jarmush has stated in interviews that he likes to watch foreign movies without subtitles, which is exactly what we were doing during this activity. It's a bit meta, but I like it, and I'm happy that my collegue chose it.

But enough about the preparation. The activity itself went very well. The kids picked up on many interresting details, and were really concentrated on body language. They were happy to recreate the dialogues in their language and to roleplay the scenes. It made them aware of their own body while playing, and also to the non-verbal cues of the characters on screen.

For the most part, they were not really far from the truth ... except when they were not! I'd like to give you an example :

After watching the Boyhood bit, the kids thought Mason was coming back from work. I don't know why, but they couldn't just believe he was coming home after a party. But when we showed the scene again, and after it was made clear that he was partying, they went on believing the party took place after his work, and to preserve the coherence of this interpretation, they all agreed that Mason was actually much older than he looked.

I find it fascinating how they struggled to maintain the coherence of their false interpretation by adding more and more details that they fiercly believed, instead of dropping the first erroneous assertion about going home from work. I think it's a very human thing to do, and as a teacher I am aware that learning always involves the difficult rupture of previously held beliefs.

Thank you again for your help and for your nice ideas.

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