5. The Player (1992) Touch Of Evil (1958)
Its fair to say that the long tracking shot in Martin Scorseses Goodfellas is possibly the most well-known and popular examples of its type in cinema with modern audiences, despite not being anywhere near as long as viewers might remember. Theres something about the long track which seems to capture imaginations. Scorseses classic sequence was certainly directly copied by Paul Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights, and Doug Liman in Swingers. However, Scorsese has always acknowledged the debt his long take owed to the opening of Orson Welless Touch of Evil an influence which received an even more overt name check in Robert Altmans 1992 Hollywood satire, The Player, starring Tim Robbins. The opening of Altmans film is a direct copy of Welles, to the extent that one of the characters featured during the shot, Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward) talks rather knowingly about the original movie, even while walking right through the middle of the exact sequence copying it:
Stuckel: The pictures they make these days are all MTV, cut, cut, cut. The opening shot of Welless Touch of Evil was six and a half minutes long well three or four anyway. He set up the whole picture with that one tracking shot
Touch of Evil isnt the only long take referenced in The Player either. Watch out for nods to Rope and Absolute Beginners as well. Now thats metatextual.
