The long take: per Collider, Alfred Hitchcock once made an entire movie, titled Rope, in 1948 under the disguise that it was shot in a singular take. When, in fact, it was shot traditionally and was not even close to a long take. This type of filmmaking, when executing scenes or an entire movie in a single take, is an exhausting process, as everything needs to be meticulously planned so that it occurs in the right order, at the right time, and nothing happens that could potentially mess it up. Otherwise, if something goes wrong in the process of filming it, everything needs to be done over again.
Whether it is an extended action shot with a handheld camera or one mounted on a dolly, or a stroll through a rural Chinese village in search of a lost son, the long take is an art form within itself. While it may look effortlessly easy on the big screen, it may have taken that director years to master that particular style to make it look as good as it did. A trademark of slow cinema, it truly is something incredible to spectate. These are a few of the many directors that have managed to master the art of the long take.
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5 Paul Thomas Anderson
United Artists
Paul Thomas Anderson might have made waves with his most recent feature film — a beloved little movie called Licorice Pizza — but he has been in the entertainment world for an extensive amount of time now. While he is known for reminiscing on very specific themes throughout his filmography, he also incorporates a long take as a stylistic element in his movies. Many of his feature films utilize a long tracking shot to follow a character through a series of actions, moving forwards, backward, and sideways. It is in these moments the camera in itself becomes a character, or even a spectator, moving across time and space to reach for what it deems as a good story.
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4 Bi Gan
Huace Pictures
Mainland Chinese director Bi Gan is cited as having taken his cinematic inspiration as a youth from fellow auteurs like Andrei Tarkovsky, which, looking at how his style developed with a flair for contemporary filmmaking, makes complete sense. Bi released his debut film Kaili Blues in 2015, which took home many awards in international film festivals, but one of the key things that almost everyone raved about was the 41-minute-long take that occurs in the middle of the film. This scene is uninterrupted for its entirety, taking the camera and literally moving it across a river in a boat, across a small village in rural China, and throughout buildings. In Bi’s second movie, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, he took it a step further by incorporating a fifty-nine-minute long take.
3 Andrei Tarkovsky
Goskino
Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most well-known Soviet directors of his era, surpassing many of his peers to create a legacy that is just as haunting as his films are. The son of a prominent Russian poet, Tarkovsky took his upbringing and education on literature very seriously, choosing to make his films into a different kind of poetry, one that lives and breathes on the screen. One of the many techniques he perfected during his brief filmography was the long take, where he would create these meditative scenes that were contemplative and visual, forcing the viewer to sit down with the character’s thoughts. This makes his movies slower in nature and more difficult to watch for those attuned high-speed action movies, but creates a rewarding experience.
2 Hou Hsiao-hsien
3-H Films
The mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien has been a major force in East Asian cinema for decades now, directing 18 feature films that are incredible markers of slow cinema. Several of his works can now be considered contemporary masterpieces, a testament to the power of their storytelling and craft. His movies are rooted in the concept of realism and depict life as accurately as possible when compared to reality, and with it comes an abundance of long takes. Even in his wuxia epic The Assassin, he deliberately chooses to incorporate long takes throughout the film, breaking the more action-packed rhythm to create still moments of contemplation. Together with Tsai Ming-Liang and Edward Yang, these three directors all live within the same vein of work.
1 Brian De Palma
Paramount Pictures
Brian De Palma’s movies can be quite polarizing, but whether one likes him or not, it is pretty hard to admit that he does not make intentional decisions when it comes to his style of filmmaking. There is a solid reason he has become one of Hollywood’s most established directors, and it is because he makes movies with a flair. Long camera pans are only one of the many techniques used in a De Palma movie, but long takes incorporating tracking shots are a staple in his impressive filmography. His movie Snake Eyes, starring Nicolas Cage, even opens with a ten-minute long take, taking its sweet time to lay down the dinner table for the feast that is to come.
