Shot 15 times over the course of half a day, the scene sets the stage for Altman’s scathing Hollywood satire. Robert Altman introduces viewers to all The Player’s major characters in his film’s opening scene. Jean-Luc Godard - Weekend, The Traffic Jam Sequence from Blue Heron on Vimeo. It’s a wryly hysterical gag whose shaggy-dog structure is that much more funny because of its pointedly inconclusive climax.
The punch line to this Jacques Tati–esque long take? Darc and Yanne’s characters don’t slow down long enough to rubberneck when they zip past a bloody car crash. In the scene, Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne’s boorish bougies suddenly emerge from a traffic jam full of self-absorbed motorists, children at play, and various other domesticated animals. The traffic-jam sequence in Jean-Luc Godard’s typically discursive, quasi-science-fiction comedy is one of the most vital scenes in his dense filmography. Shot in the Spanish town of Vera, this scene was hard for Antonioni to pin down, given how windy it was and how hard it was to keep the shot’s lighting consistent as the filmmakers moved from inside to outside the hotel. Antonioni makes us slip outside of the window’s prison-cell bars, out into the street, then back inside before we realize what’s happened. The second-to-last scene in The Passenger perfectly encapsulates why it’s somehow even more disquieting than Blowup and Zabriskie Point, the other two dramas director Michelangelo Antonioni made with producer Carlo Ponti. Unlike most tracking shots, which draw viewers into action visualized within the camera’s frame, The Passenger’s tracking shot highlights what’s happening off-screen. In this scene, Jack Nicholson’s reporter is murdered off-camera as ambient street sounds from outside of his hotel window filter in, and his body is inevitably discovered. Here are nine other very long movie shots. But Birdman’s Alejandro González Iñárritu isn’t the first filmmaker to attempt a feature-length tracking shot/long take, nor is he the first director to include several invisible cuts that divide his film’s action into multiple smaller takes. It’s the latest triumph for cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who pulled off last year’s 12-minute opening shot in Gravity and several memorable long takes in Children of Men. Birdman continues in this tradition, immersing viewers in the tortured headspace of Michael Keaton’s emotionally disturbed, has-been actor through one seemingly uncut two-hour shot.
Through long takes and immersive tracking shots, films and TV shows like Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, and True Detective have given viewers the impression that they’re watching drama as it unfolds in real time.
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