Durante una scena silenziosa sento cadere qualcosa dal soffitto.

Durante is a preposition meaning ‘during’. It introduces a span of time or an event in which something happens. In Italian it’s followed by a noun (with or without an article):

• durante il film – during the movie
• durante una scena silenziosa – during a quiet scene

In Italian, most descriptive adjectives normally follow the noun:

• una scena silenziosa (neutral)
  Putting silenziosa before (e.g. una silenziosa scena) is possible but adds a poetic or emphatic nuance, focusing attention on the “silence” as a characteristic you want to highlight.

Verbs of perception like sentire, vedere, ascoltare can be followed by an infinitive to express perceiving an action in its entirety. So:

• Sento cadere qualcosa = “I hear/feel something fall.”
  If you used a finite clause, you’d need che and a conjugated verb:
• Sento che qualcosa cade (less immediate, more like “I notice that something is falling”).

Yes, Italian word order is fairly flexible. All of these sound natural:

• Sento cadere qualcosa dal soffitto.
• Sento qualcosa cadere dal soffitto.
• Dal soffitto sento cadere qualcosa.
  Moving dal soffitto to the front emphasizes where it falls; placing qualcosa right after sento emphasizes what you hear.

Both mean ‘something’, but:

• qualcosa is written as one word and is by far the more common form.
• qualche cosa (two words) is grammatically correct but somewhat stilted.

Dal is the contraction of da + il (the). In Italian, you normally use the definite article with body parts and household parts:

• dal soffitto = da
  • il soffitto (“from the ceiling”)
    Dropping the article (da soffitto) would be ungrammatical here.

Italian often uses the present tense to describe:

1. Current, ongoing actions (“I’m hearing something right now”).
2. The narrative (or historical) present to make a scene more vivid, even if it’s recounted.

Both relate to “roof/ceiling,” but:

• soffitto = the interior overhead surface you see when you look up indoors (ceiling)
• tetto = the exterior covering of a building (roof)