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 who have managed to master the art of the long take.
Update September 28, 2023: This article has been updated by Amira Abdel-Fadil with even more filmmakers who are masters of the one take.
10 Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi was regarded as one of the greatest Japanese storytellers of all time. His most notable work is Sansho Dayu and Ugetsu. His films are visually rich compositions that make the viewer embark on truly immersive experience.
Through his usage of long shots that are often filmed from a distance, he allows for the environment and the characters to be intertwined. This technique depicts a more honest narrative that shifts and moves, almost displaying a dance of various layers of truths.
9 Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer was a Danish director and filmmaker whose character-driven films were centered around empathy. Ordert and Gertud are among some of his best films. He favored long shots to slowly paint a harmonious scene that gives room for a flowing rhythm and contemplation. He also loved to film close-ups of the humans in his story to create a more intimate experience and emotionally resonant narrative.
8 Edward Yang
Taiwanese director Edward Yang is the mastermind behind fine cinematic pieces like A Bright Summer Day and Yi Yi. He was a pioneer in Taiwan's New Wave Movement that aimed to bring forth more personal, daring and artistic narratives to the screen, even if doing so meant that they had to film on a low budget or for no profit at all.
His films took a raw and close look at Taiwanese society and brought realistic and profound tales of its people to the forefront. Inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni, he was a fan of slow cinema, which meant that he loved to incorporate long takes in order to bring out the aesthetics of his environments and convey a minimalist mood to his frames. He was awarded the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Yi Yi.
7 François Truffaut
French filmmaker François Truffaut decided to leave school at age 14 to found a film club. He loved movies from a young age and wanted to desperately change the French filmmaking scene at the time. He started off as a movie critic with the help of his friend André Bazin, a fellow critic. He then went on to direct his debut film, 400 Blows, which was inspired by his childhood.
Much like Taiwanese director Yang, Truffaut was a pioneering and leading figure of the French New Wave, which aimed to encourage more experimental ways of filmmaking in order to reach new heights in the expression of art. In the French New Wave, long shots were celebrated and frequently used in order to elicit a sense of unity of space and time realism, which Truffaut consistently and masterfully used in his projects.
6 Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson might have made waves with his most recent feature film — a beloved little movie called Licorice Pizza — but he has been making films for over three decades 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 long-tracking shots. From the tracking shot through the nightclub at the beginning of Boogie Nights to the long takes of quiet contemplation before explosive anger in There Will Be Blood, Anderson is one of the best filmmakers at the long shot.
5 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.
4 Andrei Tarkovsky
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 in 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.
3 Hou Hsiao-hsien
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.
2 Brian De Palma
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.
1 Steven Speilberg
Steven Speilberg is regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and with good reason. He has made timeless classics ranging from Jaws to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Jurassic Park mixed in with some of the most celebrated critically acclaimed movies of all time like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. Speilberg has many cinematic tricks in his arsenal, but one of his favorites is the long take or the "oner". It is a shot that basically moves with the character to communicate a lot of information.
This is notable in the scene with Jaws when the Mayor tells Brody he can't close the beaches, but it appears in many of his other films. From the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan to the incredible dance numbers in West Side Story, Spielberg knows how to do a single shot to get the most out of it.
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