Scorsese has explicitly cited Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as a blueprint for how to photograph spiritual and historical subjects. Not through narrative clarity but through color, texture, the ornamental weight of image itself. In Silence, Scorsese abandons his usual kinetic grammar and enters Parajanov's register: the frame becomes icon, color becomes meaning, and the suffering of faith is rendered not through dialogue but through the flatness and richness of visual information. Parajanov taught that cinema could approach the sacred not by explaining it but by creating a visual texture so dense it becomes incantatory. Scorsese's Silence is his most Parajanovian work—a film where the absence of faith is photographed with the same visual reverence Parajanov brings to presence.
He's influenced me in many ways, but in terms of the spiritual aspect, it's not really Diary of a Country Priest. It's more Au Hasard Balthazar in a way.
— Martin Scorsese · Film Comment
He's influenced me in many ways, but in terms of the spiritual aspect, it's more Au Hasard Balthazar in a way, if that makes any sense, but not really the style.
— Martin Scorsese · Film Comment
Films That Influenced Silence
