I've been fascinated with long, extended takes ever since I gave Tarkovsky a second chance by watching THE SACRIFICE (after not warming much to his SOLARIS). Since then I've become a big acolyte. Watching movies now, I am always imagining a way to stage a scene differently so it will not necessitate an edit. Granted, not every film must "sculpt in time" like the Russian maestro's works, and plenty succeed by doing the opposite. One could argue that Terrence Malick does in fact sculpt in time--by way of collage. By culling a story from endless footage and recorded narration, he's chipping away, whittling down to the essence, much like a sculpter. But, for the sake of this post, I have to abandon Malick: his editing rhythms preclude any extended takes.

The finale of THE SACRIFICE will remain one of the quintessential moments in film for me. The fact that they had to rebuild the house because of a camera foulup is mind boggling. If you've seen DIRECTED BY ANDREI TARKOVSKY you've seen true devestation on the face of an artist. It echos the pathos of ANDREI RUBLEV's titular priest who sees no point in art at one point in his evolution.

Since I'm drawn to the long take I can't wait to dive into Bela Tarr's SATANTANGO once it's released on DVD in late November. I've watched a few clips on YouTube and was shocked by the simplicity yet staggering weight of one sequence that's simply two men walking in the rain and heavy wind, trailed by the camera, for longer than you can ever imagine. I think J Hoberman wrote that WERKMESITER HARMONIES has a mere 42 edits in its 145 minute running time. I haven't the time to go rent it but sign me up!

A less heady film, but still great, is UNBREAKABLE, which has 12 scenes that play out entirely in unbroken master shots. Yet it retains a forward motion, unlike the lateral movements in much of Tarkovsky, with a few edit-punctuated "action" scenes. It also features a pretty brilliant screenplay that grounds the picture in a believable reality despite the superhero premise it sets up.

Wow, that got long. I should have written it on my blog...

The opening shot in Kagemusha, really a simple static shot that lasts five minutes, is actually quite thematically complex. We open with the image of three men who look exactly alike, two of them dressed the same way. We learn that two of them are brothers, one of the brothers an emperor, and the third is a thief who looks like the emperor. In effect, we have a man, and two of his shadows ('Kagemusha' meaning 'Shadow Warrior'); the man is talking to his shadow about the second shadow.

Then the second shadow speaks, and it's startling what a manic vulgar man the second shadow is. You can't help but think that shadows exist, your double or lookalike may walk somewhere on this earth, but what vast differences and variety is offered beneath the surface similarities. It's like a man facing a set of mirrors; if he dives into one he goes to one world, if he dives into another he goes to a completely different world. One stands in the midst of the mirrors, awestruck.

As someone who has been paying attention to extended takes for as long as I can remember, I would be hard pressed to come with with a "favorite" or a "best" pick. Obviously there are certain candidates that immediately spring to mind: Welles' Touch of Evil, Altman's The Player, Hitchcock's Rope, Carpenter's Halloween, etc. I've always enjoyed Brian DePalma's use of the extended shot: the opening of Bonfire of the Vanities, the killer stalking Sean Connery in The Untouchables or the 20-minute take (which was actually three takes digitally combined into one) for the beginning of Snake Eyes. I have also noticed that for the past 20 years Woody Allen has taken to shooting entire scenes in one shot. The most recent film, though, to impress me with a long tracking shot was the party sequence in the uncommonly well-shot Pride and Prejudice. The shot that I want to highlight, however, is one that I've picked not because it's the "best" or the "longest" or whatever. I've chosen it because when I first saw the film I was so caught up in the emotion of what was happening onscreen that I didn't even realize, unitl it was over, that there was not a single cut in it.

It's Stanley Tucci's Big Night, a wonderfully charming little film about two Italian brothers (played by Tucci and the incomparable Tony Shalhoub) who don't see eye-to-eye on how to run a successful restaurant. The film culminates with Tucci cooking an omelette and sitting down with his brother (after having just had a tremendous fight the night before) to eat it. Slowly, the two of them start to pat each other on the back. Neither says anything. Neither has to. All is forgiven. It is such a warm and familial ending (I can't watch it without being moved) that it isn't really about its five-minute-long, virtually dialogue-free shot or about the the novelty of Tucci preparing an omelette before our very eyes. It is about two brothers coming together after a great deal of animosity and hardship. They may have lost everything, but they still have each other. They're brothers. They love each other. No matter what else happens, that will never change.

This is an excellent topic, rob, and I am glad you posed it. It gives me an opportunity to say something that I have been thinking about lately and which, I am sure, will provoke further discussion. I'm almost at a point now where I find extended shots, unless they're extremely well-placed in the context of the film by the director and/or cinematographer, more distracting than anything else. I find they tend to draw attention to themselves, almost as if the director were saying "Hey, look at what I can accomplish in one shot!" There are exceptions, of course, but in general I am of the opinion that the extended take (like the Hitchcock "push-pull" from Vertigo) is an over-used gimmick. I mean, eventually the conceit was taken to its logical (or perhaps illogical) conclusion with the incredibly self-indulgent, but nonetheless fascinating, films Timecode and Russian Ark. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone said, "Hey, I know! Let's do an ENTIRE movie in just one shot!"

I have more or less come to the conclusion recently that editing may very well be the most important element of the motion picture medium. It is almost as if the "cut" were the rudimentary language of cinema, the primary element that (prior to the advent of digital imagery) could allow a filmmaker to do absolutely anything. He can jump forward a million years in an instant (as in Kubrick's 2001). He can take a series of otherwise innocuous images and create a scene of extreme violence (like Hithcock's Psycho). Extended tracking shots, while admittedly very cool, are severely limiting. The cut is more or less the "savior" of movies and I think a filmmaker would be foolish not to embrace the cut as something that is not only necessary but extremely helpful.

Damian's got a point; long takes are getting showy (and much too easy, thanks to video and digital effects), and there's nothing wrong with a good cut.

Though Welles (as usual) provides at least one vivid exception: in Touch of Evil the long takes are showy and meant to be showy; the flashiness is the very substance of the film.

Some of my favorite long takes:
Opening shot of The Player
Road shot in Weekend
Candle shot in Nostalghia
Opening scene in Diamonds of the Night
Numerous takes in La Belle Noiseuse
Meeting the girl scene at the lake in Sunrise
Several scenes in Last Chance for a Slow Dance (Dead End)


Some personal thoughts on long takes (pardon my pomposity):
So when does a take become a "long take" or "extended take?" I don't have a good answer, but I imagine it depends on the context. A long take in a film of long takes will likely be something different than a long take in a more typical (medium take or short take) film. Regardless, each take must have it purpose to the overall film. I agree with Damian that a long take for the sake of being long, and for merely wowing the viewer with its length and complexity, can actually take away from a film. Although, I will say, that most of the time when I notice a long take, those with whom I am watching the film do not. Which makes me think that long takes are sometimes flourishes created as a kind of language between filmmakers and cinephiles – as a wink, or gift, to those who have eyes to see. Regardless, I am of the opinion that films, like other works of art, are complex objects made up of many parts that relate to the whole, and if one part seems to exist for its own sake, rather than for the whole, then that part diminishes the work – no matter how grand a part. With this in mind, I am inclined to be skeptical of the most obvious long takes, and if they still hold up as contributing to the overall film then I am impressed.

One of the best, in my opinion, long takes of recent years is the grand party sequence in Pride and Prejudice (already mentioned by Damian above). The reason that it is so good, however, is not due to its complexity and difficulty of execution, but rather its effect in conveying the essence of the party – that is, a sweeping, moving, mass of party goers through which our heroine moves from one character to the next. The scene is in a long take because that was likely the better way to create the sense of the party, as well as the movement through the party, than a series of intercut scenes and shots. Scorsese has used similar long takes because of their flowing movement sensations – such as the entering the restaurant scene in Goodfellas, or the entering the grand party scene in the Age of Innocence (if I'm remembering it correctly). All these scenes "work" because they contribute to the film by doing their "job" of conveying information and emotions, rather than merely calling attention to themselves.

On the other hand, there are some great long takes that are designed (for the part they play in the film) to call attention to themselves. An example is the opening shot from Altman's The Player. This shot's purpose is designed to both introduce the viewer to the world of Hollywood film producers and to the roots of cinematic history – by way of a key reference to Touch of Evil, a film made by Welles, another Hollywood outsider like Altman himself. Another long take is that of Godard's weekenders trying to pass all the other cars stuck on a country road in the film Weekend. This shot, in particular, is one of my favorites. The traveling camera gives us a comic panoply of modern culture seeking recreation punctuated at the end by a grizzly car wreck. It is commentary, it draws attention to itself (very self-consciously in a very self-conscious film), it fits structurally into the story, and it is interesting. Both of these long shots draw conspicuous attention to themselves (Altman's is particularly shameless as it is humorous) and yet they both fit nicely into the kind of films of which they play an important part.

I believe Damian is right to point out the importance of the "cut" in film history. Editing is the thing that really liberated filmmaking so that it could tell stories – in particular, parallel stories within a film. However, both editing and the long take, have no intrinsic value except as powerful tools in the toolbox available to filmmakers. For me, I tend to side with André Bazin who claimed that if one pointed a camera at a subject long enough that subject would eventually reveal its truth (or something like that). And thus, I tend to love long takes, and films that are built around long takes. But I'm really not very picky – I just like great cinema however it's created.

I placed my thoughts on Paths of Glory and Kubrick's long takes over at my blog, Cinemathematics. Hope you like it.

Here are a few others that I remember: the uninterrupted sequence in Casino dedicated to the cash room and the departure of money from it; the time-spanning family congregation in Ulysses' Gaze; the famous corridor fight sequence in Oldboy; the long take in Proof for the conversation between Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Claire (Hope Davis) at the store where Claire picks a dress for Catherine; the flashback sequence dedicated to Kane's childhood in Citizen Kane; the opening scene in A History of Violence. The film Russian Ark was shot in one single take. Timecode by Mike Figgis mixed four separate continuous takes into a splitscreen presentation.

I just finished watching "Who's Afraid Of VIrginia Woolf?" and thought it was marvelous. There are so many long takes, but I believe that is simply the correct way to preserve a certain stage aspect of the play on the screen since the primary strength is the acting and, more specifically, the performing of this particular script/play. Preserving in unbroken shots the juicy acting by all four principles is truly a joy. Here, opposed to most films, the long takes are the norm and are only joined by series' of quicker cuts at crucially planned moments, heightening the effect of the cut. So often, we're treated to a long take amidst a movie of cuts, which heightens the strength of the long shot.

I believe Mike Nichols to be such a brilliant actor's director. He really has made the transition into filmmaking with grace. This was his first picture, after already being a well-established Broadway director, and it's worth noting that he followed this movie with "The Graduate" and then "Catch-22". Not a bad 1-2-3 punch for a first time director. All of those movies are performance driven, but still are so cinematic that they could only be films in the state he's presented them.

Later came "Carnal Knowledge" which is also rife with long takes and great acting. I would venture that Virginia Woolf, Carnal Knowledge, and the more recent "Closer" belong in a trilogy of sorts for Nichols. All are stagey (2 based on plays) and I mean that as a compliment. Nichols has found a way to take the rhythmic strengths that come out of long dialogue passages, the ebb and flow of pacing required to drive talky scenes, but instead of the camera being the fourth wall like the audience of a play, he lets his long takes become cinematic by moving the camera around in a visceral way without distracting from what's most interesting: The characters and performances of them.

VIrginia Woolf could be watched as a master class in the art of directing actors (or at least the result of it). And the long shots that allow us to really see the character's archs makes the film all the more breathtaking. I'd love to see this on stage, but it would be an enirely different animal to appreciate.

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