The Long Take

Daily Film Dose has a great thread here devoted to the Greatest Long Tracking Shots in Cinema. It attracted no less than 251 comments, one of them mine as follows:

What a glorious thread! I had no idea that there would be so many comments from those who appreciate imagery which actually gives the viewer time to watch the flow of actions developing. Surely this is the antidote to the fast-cutting which became so prevalent in the eighties, thanks in part to the advent of MTV.

And the comments are the voices of a 'broad church', not just fans of Hollywood movies but including respect for foreign filmmakers and those whose medium is television.

Now I just hope that some of the next-gen videobloggers are inspired to emulate and, why not, even simply imitate some of the masterly sequences presented here.

I missed any mention of Eric Rohmer who, if I recall correctly, often did long takes.

And then there is the white-knuckle Ferrari ride filmed as a single-take short which Claude Lelouche made, available on GoogleVideo here and in better definition here.

Finally, Godard's 1967 'travelling' from Weekend will be embedded with insidious regularity in my own blog, just for the inspiration it might provide to others who will be as blown away as I was when I saw it in Paris in May '68. Oui! Mai soixante-huit! Watch it below... several times.

Today on MediaGuardian reassurance that both innovation and quality still count. Guardian readers voted Godard's Breathless (1960) the 6th best foreign film of all time. Truffaut's Jules et Jim is there at number 14 and his 400 Blows closes out the top twenty. The full list is here.