Here is a part of an interview with John Williams:

I.
George often talks about his movies as, " silent movies." Obviously they are not "silent movies", but he sees himself as working in the spirit of silent movies. What does that mean to you as a composer?

JW.
When George refers to his movies as "silent movies", I think he is speaking about several aspects of the genre. He writes scripts, and they have dialogue, they have a text, but there is a hurtling forward in the editing and in the conception of the thing that is really cinematic. It is not a literary expression, even though there is a literary aspect to it. And so, when he says "silent film", I think he is referring to a kind of rhythmic and visual energy - so that you could almost remove the text and it would still hurtle forward. It is the kind of rhythmic and kinetic expression that speaks - and that is what music is about really - events in time and events in a certain speed, or lack of speed. So I don't think that George means "silent movie" in terms of the fact that the movie doesn't have sound, but more in terms of the spirit of the action movies of the silent period that didn't depend on a literary text, but action, visual effects and timing, and probably music.

People have observed that even the silent films of the 1920's, the films that we refer to as being silent, were never really silent. An orchestra was always in the pit or an organist or some music from the classical repertoire was being played at the same time as the movie. And that is still really the part of the tradition of what we do. George links strongly with that past. I am very fortunate to work-with a director like that because music is kind of a sensual (or essential?) pulse of what he does Cinematically. It makes my role an important one, or an integral one, to the real spirit and heartbeat of his films.

You'll find the entire interview here:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/f ... rview.html