We tend to remember long takes that call attention to themselves as such: the opening shots of "Touch of Evil" or "The Player"; the entrance to the Copacabana in "GoodFellas"; all those shots in Romanian movies, and pictures directed by Bela Tarr and Jia Zhangke... And then there are the ones you barely notice because your eyes have been guided so effortlessly around the frame, or you've been given the freedom to explore it on your own, or you've simply gotten so involved in the rhythms of the scene, the interplay between the characters, that you didn't notice how long the shot had been going on.
For this compilation, "Deep Focus," I've chosen eight shots I treasure (the last two I regard as among the finest in all of cinema). They're not all strictly "deep focus" shots, but they do emphasize three-dimensionality in their compositions. I've presented them with only minimal identifications so you can simply watch them and see what happens without distraction or interruption. Instead, I've decided to write about them below. Feel free to watch the clips and then re-watch (freeze-frame, rewind, replay) the clips to see what you can see. To say they repay re-viewing is an understatement.
Part I: Crowds
1. "New York, New York" (Martin Scorsese, 1977)
Robert De Niro's Jimmy Doyle -- the guy in the "Hawaiian" New York shirt -- disappears into the VJ Day crowd... but not for long. The mise-en-scene relocates him for us, via a red neon arrow. This is the last shot in a brief prologue that sets up Jimmy as a compulsive scene-stealer and scene-maker who must command the limelight in any situation. Notice all the little dramas and sight-gags in the teeming throng: the sailor lifting up and twirling the woman in the red dress; the Yellow Cab "Taxi Driver" reference; the folks holding up the "WAR OVER" tabloid headline; the way the two sides of the theater marquee repeat the movie's title: "New York, New York"...
2. "Playtime" (Jacques Tati, 1967)
Tati's masterpiece is what 70mm (and big-screen Blu-ray) were made for -- probably the favorite film of more film critics and academics than any other. This is the third shot of the movie, after an establishing shot of a steel-and-glass building cut off above the ground floor and a pan through the tinted windows that follows the nuns. The visual strategy of the entire movie is presented here (and it's followed by a reverse angle toward the other end of the concourse). The choreography is exquisitely timed, but you're free to follow whomever you like. My favorite moment is when the anonymous couple (foreground left) lock eyes with the blue-jumpsuited janitor (middle-distance, right).
3. "Caché" (Michael Haneke, 2005)
SPOILER WARNING. If you've seen the movie, you know that this is the final shot. (It's also the only one in this series that I've abbreviated; as far as the movie is concerned, it "ends" exactly when the credits begin to roll.) The shot is fascinating for several reasons. It repeats an image from earlier in the film, only this time two minor characters (or characters who have been considered relatively "minor") appear together for the first time. If you haven't seen the movie, you might not see them -- or, at least, won't grasp the significance of what you're seeing. (Indeed, many who watch the movie from the beginning don't notice them.) And even if you do follow recognize the characters, what does this encounter mean? What I love most about this shot is how many things are happening in it -- any one of which could be meaningful if you knew more about the individuals you were looking at. Watch it a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth time and choose different characters to follow...
Part II: Two men and a bike... and a dog and a cat.
4. "Moonlighting" (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1982)
I couldn't think of how to categorize this shot, so it gets one of its own. The "plot" function comes from the internal monologue of Jeremy Irons' character, heard in voiceover as he rides his bike down the street. As he coasts away from the camera, a man on the sidewalk is walking toward us with his leashed dog. Then a cat appears from out of frame on the right. Irons remembers he's forgotten something. The cat proceeds across the frame, and just as he jumps up on a small retaining wall on the left, the shot ends. Magnificent. This is the kind of thing Skolimowski -- and Eastern European (but especially Polish) filmmakers in general, from Ivan Passer to Roman Polanski -- have a feel for: bringing images to life by choreographing even the most mundane details of daily existence into an absurdist ballet.
Part III: Two-shots
5. "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (Preston Sturges, 1944)
An entire date in one shot. It begins with Trudy (Betty Hutton) and Norval (Eddie Bracken), passing through the picket-fence gate of her house on their way to the movies, with strict orders from her stern father (William Demerest, of course) to come straight home afterwards. They're both a little nervous because they both have high hopes for the night ahead. Just different ones -- as is apparent from the way they initially talk right past each other. As the situation develops, we don't really notice that the conversation is transpiring in one unbroken shot. But we do feel the finely-tuned comic rhythms of the writing and performances, and sense the characters' passage through the neighborhood as they pass residential, industrial and retail/commercial real estate (single-family homes, boarding house, hospital/clinic, auto mechanic, lending library, office supply store, movie theater showing patriotic war pictures, featuring: "The Private and the Public"). Dramatically and comedically speaking, the scene turns just as they round the corner and Norval says: "Why Trudy, that's almost all I live for. Except for maybe getting into the army I can't think of anything that makes me more happy than helping you out. I almost wish you could be in a lot of trouble some time so I could prove it to you.." Be careful what you almost wish for. By the end of the shot, Trudy's agenda for the evening prevails, and Norval's hopes are dashed.
6. "Pauline at the Beach" (Eric Rohmer, 1983)
Here's an example of the kind of thing Rohmer does all the time. Very rarely do you see standard reverse-angle (over-the-shoulder) setups in a Rohmer movie (particularly early ones), unless there's a good reason -- like the excruciating confrontation between Sabine and Edmond in the latter's office in "Le beau marriage" (1982). Rohmer often prefers to a conversation in side-by-side two-shot, or by holding on just one of the participants -- even if it's not the one who's speaking at the time.
In this scene, Marion (Arielle Dombasle), who has just arrived for a late-summer stay at her family's beach place with her teenage niece Pauline (Amanda Langlet), stops in on Henri (Féodor Atkine), with whom she has just slept the night before, partially out of annoyance with Pierre (Pascal Gregory), a friend who wants their relationship to be something more. You can feel the heat and the air circulating through the open windows as the two conduct their maneuvers around the room, sitting, standing, circling each other. The camera hovers in the center and effortlessly takes in the surrounding action. "The logistics are too complicated," she says. But Rohmer sees them organically.
Watch the way Henri moves in on Marion as she sits on the red towel in the windowsill, and the cocky, off-hand gesture with which he brushes the beach sand (and room dirt) from his bare foot before suggesting that young Pauline needs to "lose her cherry." He then stashes one hand between his legs with and his other touches Marion's hair and moved down her back. She looks off distractedly, bringing her hand to her chest. The mutual seduction is sealed with a window exit, but not the one we expect. Marion returns to the window through which she entered, when she leaves the frame we see her reflection in the pane of the open window as she goes deeper inside the house... followed by Henri.
7. "Chinatown" (Roman Polanski, 1974)
If, on any given day, I was asked to choose the greatest single shot in American movies, it might well be this one -- in part because it's from the movie I often designate as my favorite, one I've seen countless times, and because I don't know when I first realized it was all in a single take. WARNING: If you haven't seen "Chinatown," you owe it to yourself to do so immediately, before watching this clip which is, in many ways, the climax of the picture.
All the movie's motifs and themes are brought together in this shot. I'm not talking about the story elements in the dialog, but the elements within the shot itself: frames (that focus vision, but mask what is beyond the edges), pairs of lenses (with one of them cracked or flawed), water (fresh for drinking and irrigation; saltwater from the sea, "where life begins"), wounds (Cross's deteriorated vision, Jake's wounded nose [blocked for most of the shot], Claude's bandaged head)... This is the climactic confrontation between private eye J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and Noah Cross (John Huston), patriarch of Los Angeles and co-founder of the Department of Water and Power. (And in L.A., water and power are synonymous.) It's also one of the many moments in the film in which the tables are turned on Jake, whose flawed vision never quite allows him to see enough of the picture to really know what's going in. There's no fancy camera movement here, just some subtle dolly work and a nearly 180-degree pan that reflects the reversal of power that occurs in the conversation itself.
We begin by looking into the past, from the patio on which Gittes and Cross's daughter, Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) have had tea and pre-coital drinks, all the way through the archways of the house and out the front, through the big, black open door that has repeatedly kept Gittes out of the family's business. A car passes through the central frame within the frame within the frame... and back out again. Then a puff of smoke blows in from off-screen left, telling us where Jake is standing, and reminding us that John Alonzo's Panavision frame is still not wide enough to take in everything that's going on here. Cross enters and moves toward the camera, all the way through the house before the first words are spoken -- and, significantly, he spots Gittes before we do: "Oh, there you are!"
I won't get into the specifics of the conversation (it's the detective movie staple in which the private eye lays out the solution to the Mystery for the audience by telling the villain that he's figured it all out). Gittes begins with a trick, getting Cross to put on his bifocals ("Can you see all right in this light?") and then confronting him with the evidence of murder (which has something to do with the fine print in a newspaper obituary column). At that point, Cross knows what Gittes has got, and takes charge of the shot, drawing the camera to the right as he soliloquizes about water and power, bringing the Mulwrays' backyard ornamental pond into the frame. Behind him, the sun dies with faint streaks of red: "You see, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place they're capable of anything."
8. "Swing Time" (George Stevens, 1936)
Coincidentally, the Academy Award-winning song from the greatest of the Astaire-Rogers movies is also used in "Chinatown": Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields' "The Way You Look Tonight." But that number (staged as a Hollywood glamour parody, with Fred singing to Ginger as she shampoos her hair), isn't the one we're dealing with here, perhaps the most thrilling number in the Astaire-Rogers canon because it's in one shot. Astaire was a stickler for maintaining a Buster Keaton-like integrity of space and movement within it. He and co-choreographer ("Dance Director") Hermes Pan knew darn well that if you were going to show great dancers on screen, you had to be able to see them dance: from head to toe, in real time. Otherwise, what's the point of having a great dancer -- and how could you tell?
One of the things I find so breathtaking (and I mean that as in "exhilarating," "taking my breath away" and quite literally "leaving me out of breath") about this dance, the "Waltz in Swing Time," is that the dizzying choreography and subtly sympathetic dancing camerawork create electric suspense every time I see it. I keep thinking: "What if they don't make it to the end?!?! What if they fluff the take and have to do it all over again? Moment-by-moment the pressure and the tension escalate. Ginger does not do everything Fred does, but she sure does a lot of it backward and in heels, as the old saying as it. Busby Berkeley, Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse and others did much to capture and create dance (from production numbers to solos) on film, but nothing has ever surpassed the high-wire daring and seemingly artless honesty of this.
If you study all eight of these shots, you should learn enough to pass any film class.
60 Comments
Brilliant write-up, Jim. I've only seen Chinatown and Playtime of these eight films.
But I think there would be many more shots that could be added this list. One that I can think of is the house-burning scene in Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice. Or you think that was attention-calling too?
There are many great long takes in Tarkovsky, and that's certainly one of them. With this particular group I was trying to emphasize shots in which the emphasis was not so much on the passage of time (though that's certainly an element) as on the focus of the eye's attention in and around the frame for the duration of the shot...
In that case, Tati certainly does rule supreme. I'm thinking of that crazy steadycam scene at the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill Vol. 1. But I don't think it's that long either...
Yeah, I loved this peice, Jim. Now I'll have to see the Rhomer and the Skolimowski!
My list, within the parameters of the criteria you put down in the introduction, might actually have some shots from Tarr and from Tarkovsky and Zhangke. Maybe I'm misconstruing what you mean by "long takes that call attention to themselves," but, for instance, after 2/3 minutes of the same shot I think the initiated viewer will easily get over the sheer stunt of the shot and focus on the mise-en-scene itself.
Jia Zhangke's surname is Jia. In Chinese, the family name comes first.
As I told you last week, I love the clips you show in this video essay. The "New York, New York" one is lovely and playful, and is my favourite shot in the whole movie.
And I think I must watch "Moonlighting" again.
Anything about long shots gets my attention. Obviously, the choice is yours, but at least something by Tarkovsky needs to be mentioned (plenty that fits in with your criteria), and something by Gus Van Sant (Last Days or Elephant could also fit in) and there's shots by Bela Tarr at times when he pans or draws back and the eye's attention is precisely on the changes in around the frame. But it's a judgment call, and I've been meaning to take another look at some Rohmer anyway, thanks for the reminder.
We need to properly distinguish between "long shots" and "long takes." A "long shot" is the proper term for what is often called a "wide-angle shot." A "long take" is a shot that lasts for an unusually long amount of screen time before cutting to another shot.
Good point, though some of these are both. "Lengthy shot"? I didn't want to keep using the same term, "long take," over and over...
This is a terrific post. I particularly love the shot from PLAYTIME, a film full of such extended moments when the eye can just wander throughout the screen. Depending on where one focuses their attention, the film can play quite differently on multiple viewings.
For me, a great deep focus shot shares qualities with anthropological study, in that it relativizes the single human experience. It places the spectator in a position where a distanced, comparative experience of the action is possible. For instance, I enjoyed listening to the various rhythms of shoes tapping down the hall in the scene from Playtime.
Good compilation Jim, I must say the 2 I find most striking in this set are "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" for the precision and timing of the dialog (I imagine there were quite a few takes of that one to get everything down), and "Swing Time". I'd never seen had the opportunity to just watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance. I have newfound respect for their skills compared to every other movie ever made that featured a couple dancing.
Nicely done. I didn't catch the arrow bit (among other things you detail) in NY NY when I saw it. Simple shot, yet so richly designed.
Looking at Morgan's Creek again, I realize you could probably make this same video essay entirely out of Preston Sturges scenes (or scenes just from Playtime, or the dance numbers from Swing Time). Things like this remind me why I love the movies.
Great stuff.
Would you consider Tarantino the inverse here? What I mean is, and by no means is my memory of his works photographic, but he also does many long shots, but in fact he *doesn't* want you to move away from the focus of his shot. Hope I've explained that correctly. e.g. Madsen's gas scene w/ the cop in R. Dogs.
I enjoy the long take in "The Shining" when Mr. Ullman takes Jack and Wendy on a tour through the Overlook. They walk through the Colorado Lounge and, from beginning to end, the motifs and themes regarding status, racial and gender roles and greatness are laid out; previous denizens of the Overlook frozen in photographs, the clashing styles of Native America and Europe (a kind of sculpture of tree branches, a rug with Native American print, a grand piano) and windows letting in harsh, cold light. Kubrick later takes us back here for the pivotal confrontation between Jack and Wendy, Jack in his plaid and jeans reminiscent of frontier settlers and Wendy in moccasin boots, Native American-style dress and black hair (the only irony is her carrying a baseball bat, repeated later when Jack wields a tomah--er, axe). Mr. Ullman makes note of the presidents, royalty and celebrity that have frequented this hotel: "All the best people." And, of course, the establishment of the spaciousness of the hotel, which only seems become more grand, more vast, as the film goes on, but is so devoid of anything truly alive.
There's also the extended shot on the patio in "Secrets & Lies" where you can watch each family member's spontaneous reactions to what's going on. Perfectly acted.
Glad to see "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" on here. I was just thinking about what a great, underrated director Preston Sturges is; he's often identified as a great screenwriter who happened to direct his own stuff, but he's got a distinctive visual style as well, somehow bold yet subtle at the same time, a combination you'd think would be impossible. "Hail the Conquering Hero" has a similarly laid-back super-long take in the early scene at the bar between Eddie Bracken and the soldiers. Re-watching it again recently, it took me about five or six minutes before I realized there hadn't been a cut yet. It's a Mike Leigh-length long-take conversation.
"What if they don't make it to the end?!?! What if they fluff the take and have to do it all over again?"
Then... they would have to do it again. It wouldn't be much of a big deal. As opposed to live theater, where they only have once chance to get it right, and if they don't, everyone will see.
Well, yes, but that's what I'm saying: I know it's already happened and has been captured on film, but I'm experiencing it in the moment, as if it were taking place live before me, because there are no cuts to interrupt the illusion.
Heh. My own favourite long shot - not so much deep focus as tracking - is the opening from Truffaut's "Day for Night" - not unlike the opening shot of "Touch of Evil" in the way that it tracks along a street, picking up and then moving on from one or another person - and then we hear "Coupe!", the director and AD call everyone together and point out what didn't work right...
And then they do it again, this time showing us how the magic is made.
By doing it over and over till it's right.
Nice. I like the selections here. I have two favorites that don't come up much, one fairly showy, the other fairly invisible. The showy one is this one from the beginning of Johnnie To's Breaking News:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJlCYNt2z9k
The invisible one is the scene where Robert Montgomery gets off the bus and enters the bus station in Ride the Pink Horse. I can't find a clip of that one, unfortunately.
Something tells me you're not very fond of "Step Up 2: The Streets"
I found all these shots more cathartic than exhilarating. Being used to, and so expecting, frequent cutting, it felt so relaxing to be able to actually see what the hell was going on.
Thanks so much for this post!
I just saw "Playtime" for the first time last weekend. It was magnificent.
"If you study all eight of these shots, you should learn enough to pass any film class."
I regret to inform you that's just flat out not true...
even if it should be.
In the "Playtime" shot there is one moment that I obsess over. As the nuns cross out of the picture the woman in the middle window takes a step to the right. It's a wholly unnatural kind of move but one that must have been choreographed due to the nature of the scene. For the remainder of the shot she appears to be dividing her attention between the person on the right and the person on the left. A lot happens in the sequence, but I cannot watch any of it (save for the officer who walks in) because my mind is enraptured by what is happening at the end of the hall, and all due to that one little bit of business.
I wonder if Tati also established nearly motionless actors in the far background to draw attention away from his use of cardboard replacements in later scenes.
I have a personal weakness for an extended take in Police Story Part II: a tracking shot through headquarters as poor Jackie Chan falls victim to an incessant source of violence and fury.
It's comically electrifying the way our hero in his robin's egg blue shirt is seemingly held in the same position in the frame as the world moves around him and looks on, not to mention the little bits of business like Uncle Bill on the toilet struggling for his pants. The take can also be divided into smaller pieces of significance as signaled by new positions of the actors and where the moving frame pauses; it could pass for a short universal tail all its own.
Jim,
You have any appreciation for Rube Goldberg devices? Granted the interest is different from a movie, but the lasting impression they make has some common ground with long shots from movies. Maybe its the sustained element that jars with its kin. The two most impressive displays I've ever seen make for interesting long shots.
This is perhaps the greatest goldberg device:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
The other would be the European Honda commercial from a few years back (also on youtube).
Great, great entry. It reminds me of the Dogme 09.8 post; both celebrate and urge a cinema that is not very common these days.
JIM
Sling Blade has two great ‘long takes’ Doyle getting beer bottles thrown at him by Frank and the last time Carl and Frank are together when he gives him his books and puts his arm around him its like 5 mins long and its very emotional. No offense to Geoffrey Rush but Billy Bob should have won best actor that year. Also Raging Bull has a great shot of Jack Lamotta making his way from the locker room to the ring great camera work and Pulp Fiction the foot massage conversation.
Great post. For some reason this got me thinking about the trend in action movies to cut every second or two. It's as if filmakers decided that the audience needs a constant assault on the senses to remain engaged. In fact, the opposite is true. Long takes usually increase the drama, as you can actually see what the hell is going on.
For example, I've included a clip of the great car chase scene in To Live and Die in L.A. The whole clip is 8 minutes long, and I'd bet the average shot length is around 5 or 6 seconds. Today that would be 1-2 seconds. The shot I thought of is at the 23 second mark, and lasts until the 43 second mark.
It shows our heroes speeding away from the scene of a murder, and then pans up to show the car pursuing them. I love this type of action, since the viewer is easily oriented, and has a real sense of space and time. I'm sure a modern version of this scene would include about 10-15 cuts in that same 20 second span. The whole 8 minute sequence shows the benefits of staying on the action instead of cutting away. Since it's one of the all-time great movie action scenes, I'm sure this stuff is much easier said then done, but whenever I see this I lament that they just don't make them like this anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ_39lxlDAg
There were several long takes in A Clockwork Orange that always grabbed my attention, though they didn't have the kind of length you talk about here. A lot of them were gradual dolly shots that slowly revealed more and more pieces of a tableau.
But looking for things more in the length you describe, there was a particular conversation between Kris and Snaut in Solaris in which a long take subverted the rules of space. Kris is talking to Snaut. Kris stands still. Pan left with Snaut, who speaks for a while. Then pan left to reveal... Kris! How did he get there? When the actor was off camera, he walked around behind it and stood in a new location, so when we suddenly find he has changed places, it seems like magic. And as he leaves the room, We see Snaut in his chair, which is not where we left him, either. And this is only the tail-end of the shot, which comprises the entire scene and several times moves off the actors for extended stretches and trusts us to know that they are still there, just off camera.
Jim, have you seen Werckmeister Harmonies? If not, I think it would be something that would excite you very much.
But Bela Tarr's shots always call attention to themselves, and I would argue that that's part of the point of his style. He wants to be known as a virtuoso of long takes. This post is about long takes that don't call attention to themselves.
I am a huge fan Tarr and his style, by the way, so my comment was not a criticism against him.
Interesting article but just a nitpick: Bela Tarr is Hungarian, and not Romanian as is implied in the phrase, "all those shots in Romanian movies and pictures directed by Bela Tarr and Jia Zhangk.."
Sorry to nitpick your nitpick, but you're wrong here. The structure of the sentence sets Tarr apart from the "Romanian movies," and his name is followed by Jia Zhangke. If what you said were true, then logically Jia would also have been implied to be Romanian, which is clearly not the case. In fact, the wording of the sentence would imply a stronger connection between Tarr and Jia, since their names are separated only by the word "and," instead of the phrase "and pictures directed by."
A perfect example of where the Oxford comma can be useful, ie "all those shots in Romanian movies, and pictures directed by Bela Tarr and Jia Zhangk.."
Don't forget the single take of Robert Redford's telephone conversation in All The President's Men. It starts with a long shot of him across the newsroom and gradually closes in on his face over several minutes as the gravity of the conversation he's having becomes apparent.
How about Hitchcock's Rope? Especially the shot where the old lady cleans up the table...
Fascinating post. I must see Playtime, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Swing Time soon!
There is a single take of a 17 and half minute exchange between Bobby Sands and Father Moran in Steve McQueen’s Hunger. A special film camera magazine was developed to make the take possible.
The now-famous long take at end of Antonioni's The Passenger isn’t mentioned here; does it draw attention to itself? Actually, I didn't notice it was a single take when I first saw the film.
Then there's Russian Ark, directed by Alexander Sokurov: a 99-minute motion picture shot with a Steadicam in a single take. But with the tagline "2000 cast members, 300 years, 33 rooms, 3 orchestras, 1 take" it does rather draw attention to itself. Plus it was shot on HD video, so it can’t count as a “deep focus” shot.
Why can't it count, on the basis of it being HD?
Well, they say that HD video affords a greater depth of field than 35mmm film, because of the lower resolution image that digital sensors produce. But this lower resolution results in an overall loss of perceived image sharpness compared to standard film. Also consider that shooting at f16 on video (the f-stop used to achieve deep focus) would require an inordinate amount of light on the subject/scene being shot. So as technology stands now, approximate deep focus achieved on HD video does not quite equal the deep focus achieved in the eight examples posted here by Jim. Or what?
Actually, you are mistaken. HD has been traditionally associated with greater depth of field because the image sensors have typically been much smaller than the 35mm film frame. Digital cinema cameras whose sensors are the same size as 35mm film offer the same depth of field with the same lenses. Examples of such cameras include the RED ONE (used on Soderbergh's Che), the Panavision Genesis (used on Gibson's Apocalypto), the Arriflex D-20 (used on Ritchie's RocknRolla), and the Sony F35. Please read the Wikipedia article on depth of field for more information on the factors that determine it.
HD does not have lower perceived image sharpness. Since the film image is composed of grains, which are all different from frame to frame, HD actually looks sharper and cleaner than film. The biggest aesthetic downside of HD has been the widely maligned "digital look," which is partly due to the sharpness and cleanness of HD that makes it look more "harsh," "sterile," and "plastic" compared to film. Being someone who makes movies and shoots exclusively in HD, I can tell you that I actually try to make my footage look softer in order to have it appear more "organic" and "film-like," as do many others within the community.
Furthermore, resolution is a moot point because movies shot on film, as viewed in the theater, only have HD resolution at best. A 35mm film negative is considered to have somewhere in the ballpark of 6K resolution (around 6000 horizontal pixels), but all subsequent generations after that will have considerably less. From the negative, a positive must be struck to make the workprint, from which a master has to be made, and then distribution prints. Distribution prints are considered to have only about 2K resolution (around 2000 horizontal pixels), which is only slightly better than HD's 1920x1080 pixels.
Perhaps for this reason, the industry standard resolution for digital intermediates is 2K, not 4K (which is typically reserved for big-budget spectacles). This means that many, if not most, of the movies that you see in the theater were reduced to 2K resolution in the editing and color grading process, before a master was even completed. On top of that, the theater is only one of many viewing options these days. Movies are now most often watched on DVD, Blu-ray, or at lower resolutions on a personal computer.
I'm not sure where you got the notion that f/16 is required for deep focus. In Robert L. Carringer's book, The Making of Citizen Kane, cinematographer Gregg Toland was said to have shot the movie mainly between f/8 and f/11, only using f/16 occasionally. The actual f-number is beside the point anyway, because aperture is just one factor in depth of field. Nobody would shoot at f/16 on a small-sensor digital video camera anyway; it's entirely pointless. The depth of field is already there, and at that f-stop, image quality is likely to suffer due to diffraction.
But ultimately, all of that is irrelevant, because the fundamental mistake in your argument is that you don't seem to understand what deep focus really is. Deep focus is an aesthetic defined entirely by large depth of field. Nothing else, not resolution, "perceived sharpness," f-number, or even image format/sensor size, matter. As long as large depth of field is achieved through any means necessary, then a shot or movie has deep focus. The four parameters for depth of field are focal length, aperture (f-stop), subject-to-camera distance, and image format size. That's all.
Please get your information straight before you try to make a point.
I stand corrected. Thank you.
The 7-minute opening shot of Robert Altman's The Player certainly deserves mention on any short list of great long shots.
I was always fond of the party scene in Boogie Nights. It tracks through the entire party, stopping to see most of the major characters conversations for a short wile and culminates in the camera following an attendee INTO the swimming pool. I don't usually notice the long take the first time viewing and this one blew my mind on sight.
I love that, too. And then there's the opening shot -- which looks like it could have been photographed by Rollergirl herself!
Boogie Nights is the best. (2nd Lieblingsfilm). The openeing pool party scene is one of my favorite sequences in movie history. "Back door Johnny".
How about Little Bill's final scene, when he walks to the car, gets the gun, and walks back. I love how he leaves his glass of champagne on the hood of the car. I always picture someone cleaning it up the next day, long after the bodies are gone.
And the long shot of Dirk's face while Jesse's Girl plays in one of my other favorite sequences in movie history. I'm not sure I can explain why that shot at that point in the movie so amazing, but it just is.
I suppose it may call attention to itself, as some (not me) would say all of PT Anderson's work does, but that's a different, more subjective argument. I think the astute filmgoer might be aware of these shots, but that doesn't mean they're not working.
Amazingly, the dance number you closed the video with is only my third favorite from Swing Time (though probably the best to illustrate your point about the long shot). For me, the single most thrilling scene I've encountered in film is the "Never Gonna Dance" number toward the end of that film. It took a third or fourth viewing of that scene for me to even view it as a dance. It is more like emotion personified. You can see through every small gesture the desperation and fear of the screen couple separating, and the horror for the audience that Astaire and Rogers will, indeed, never dance again. What I felt when I saw that scene for the first time is the high I'm chasing when I put a new movie in my DVD player. As you said, it left me out of breath.
But, "Never Gonna Dance" is just slightly short of perfect. Durring the crane shot to follow the dancers up the staircase, there is one unfortunate cut to a new shot. I wonder if it would have been physically possible to continue the shot all the way to the top of the balcony. Sure would have been incredible. Oh well. It's still my favorite.
The "Swing Time" number feels a little bit more mechanical to me, and I think the abrupt changes in the volume of the orchestra were bad choices. The sharp change in tone felt to me almost as jarring as a camera cut. The music should have a kinetic energy to keep up with the dancers. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not a great scene. Just a bit less great.
The only rational explanation I could conceive of for _Playtime_ was the view of life through the eyes of an autistic: someone who would lose all but the simplest plotline amid the overwhelming number of simultaneous stories & events going on in any perspective, most of which are filtered out by normal minds.
Nice list. I love that Miracle of Morgan's Creek in here. It was such an understated comic dialogue scene that it was nearly the end before I realized that Sturges had staged the whole thing uncut.
Also, I think you've reminded me why musicals outside of the Astaire-Rogers canon are, for me at least, hit and miss. I think I'm one of those "cranky formalists" that someone (J Hoberman?) designated as a type, but the "integrity of space" issue is one of those things that separate the merely good from the great in filmmaking. In the specific case of the "dance musical", the team around Astaire-Rogers and the dancers themselves knew the relationship between the visual space/frame, the choreography, and the developing romance between the two characters that can be ignited at specific points by the dance.
Lastly: I recently saw Hou's _Flight of the Red Balloon_ and goddamn if I kinda want to see it on lists like this. So, so beautiful. Like many foreigners Hou fell in love with the face of the city and photographs it well. However, those moments when we stare into an interior watching characters move around and either speaking in fragments or not speaking at all -- absolutely made for deep focus viewing.
How about that great shot from "Children of Men" -- that scene in the car where they are ambushed and shot at -- aside from it being a gripping, suspenseful scene, from a technical angle, it's breathtaking. How did they film this?!
Another shot i dearly love that makes use of deep focus to tremendous effect is Leone's incredible crane shot in "Once Upon a Time in the West" that takes us from the closed-in world of the railway station's back platform up and over and opens the view into that amazing panorama of the great open spaces.
Children of Men should be in this... The scene where they;re being shot at/blown up as well as the car scene.
\turrok the dinosauor hunter ! completely
one shot !
Though both pay attention to themselves, I can think of two extraordinary long-take shots, from *The Night Porter* and *Birth*. Both take place at the opera and I would argue that Jonathan Glazer was directly referencing The Night Porter when he does the dazzling 3+ minute take on Nicole Kidman's face in *Birth*.
Thinking of *The Shining*, the 'ice-cream' conversation between Danny and Scatman Crothers is absolutely stunning and crisp. Not sure if it is all in one take, but it *feels* like it. It's the highlight of the film for me.
You should also reference *Hunger*, which has a 15 minute or so conversation between a priest and an IRA hunger-striker. The sequence has but one flip-shot in the lot of it and the endurance of the take is part and parcel with the theme of the film.
Great topic to discuss. I would never have thought Rohmer to qualify.
Walking around and through the British army on the beach in "Atonement."
Punch Drunk Love has its share of great long shots. I guess Paul Thomas Anderson likes them as he shows in his Across the Universe video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLvhtf09V4g ) though Fiona Apple isn't probably in the same shots as what goes on in the background.
I tried to look for the very best long shot in Punch Drunk Love but it is hard to get to know which with what is easily found on youtube. Still, the movie is plagued with great shots, or so I think at least.
Ok, what about Weekend? I speak of course about the long take along the traffic jam. Does it call attention to itself? Of course, and intentionally so. Godard uses the shot both for the purely cinematic joy of its astounding complexity, and to emphasize the themes of the film. From a purely technical standpoint, it is unrivaled. It is also beautiful and disturbing. I can't imagine a long take list without mentioning it.
I love the way John Huston just seems to grow in that scene -- he starts out of a size with Nicholson, and then the camera shifts and he just ENGULFS half the screen. Marvelous stuff.
Maybe its just me, but it seems like there's been a pretty vocal backlash against the long take in recent years. I'm thinking in particular of pieces like this one, complaining about the showiness of Cuaron's setpiece long takes in CHILDREN OF MEN:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/children-of-men,35640/
Even back in my days as a film major undergrad, there was a general consensus among my peers (and our TAs) that the long takes in then -contemporary films like BOOGIE NIGHTS and MAGNOLIA were pointless showmanship on the part of the director.
Not that I find it a particularly compelling argument (badmouthing ROPE is an easy way to get on my bad side), but it does seem to be out there quite a bit. I guess I'm most curious as to how it jives with the real bete noir of current critics, the hyperactive editing of Nolan/Greengrass/etc.
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