10 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Responsible For Game-Changing Innovations

2002's Russian Ark is downright strange but the scope and its accomplishment pardon it from any criticism it could receive, most of which is due to its bizarre structure and plot.

Russian Ark is basically a movie about a ghost who takes an unseen narrator (also a ghost) on a trip through time and through the Hermitage museum, discussing Russian history and meeting important historical figures. Just plain weird. The film does this in a tour guide/tourist dynamic, only with a ghost and the narrator trapped in a time traveling museum. The film is shot through the eyes of the narrator in a first person perspective.

It's the manner in which this tour happens that is of importance. This occurs in one long single tracking shot, in one take.

Tracking shots are nothing new - Alfred Hitchcock's Rope is considered one of the first uses of the long tracking shot - but films had previously been limited by the need to actually have film in the camera. Russian Ark is one of the first films to be shot entirely on a digital camera (Star Wars Episode II being another 'notable' first), and it remains the longest single take in the history of cinema.