8 Brilliant Uses Of The Long Take In Movies & TV Shows
A run down of the trickiest technique in every director's oeuvre, building tension in the take.
In this age of rapid-fire, big budget cinema, where a single shot can be worth less than the film it is captured on, it often pays to stop for a minute, hold the action, or linger on a scene and let it unfold without the chop of the editor’s scissors. The long take – an uninterrupted single shot usually lasting more than one minute, and in some cases much, much longer – is precisely the way in which the astute director manages this.
Habitually used to build drama, tension or excitement, the long take has been utilised by the industry’s finest, from Chantal Akerman to Paul Thomas Anderson, Luchino Visconti to Gus Van Sant. In terms of logistics, it is a tough one to pull off without a hitch, drawing on the timing and proficiency required in traditional theatre and applying this to a kinetic, three-dimensional medium with a multitude of ‘moving parts’. But, for those who get it right, the long take can produce a rare piece of cinematographic gold.
8. Rope (1948)
There is probably no better way to kick off this list than with the film that popularised the technique: Alfred Hitchcock’s crime thriller, Rope. Cut into ten five-to-ten-minute segments, Hitchcock maintains his long takes for the film’s duration; so, in this sense, this entry is not one specific take but many. Rope charts a dinner party thrown by two young New York bachelors who have murdered their friend and stashed the body within arms reach of their guests, in an arrogant display of what is, to them, social and intellectual superiority.
Based on Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play of the same name, it makes sense that Rope was staged and filmed in the style of a theatre production, with discreet cuts between sections designed to provide the viewer and the drama with a sense of continuous flow. Hitchcock himself said as much in an interview with French director François Truffaut, where he noted the desire to create a film that both moved and was contained in the same manner as a play, ignoring the general conventions of filmmaking at the time.
Though it has been noted that the director was unhappy with the final result – having done his best to keep it from general release – it remains the cornerstone of the long take’s history, and is considered so fundamental that it has inspired countless directors to adopt the technique without even batting an eyelid.