Sequence shot

(Plano secuencia / Plan séquence)

Because of its duration, this type of shot can cover a complete narrative structure of approach-development-climax and ending. It generally involves various scales from close up shot to long shot, and is characterised by being filmed with a moving camera for a period of several minutes. Examples include the initial introductory shot of The Round Dance (La Ronde, 1950) by Max Ophuls, lasting four and a half minutes, the one in Touch of Evil (1958) by Orson Welles, lasting three and a half minutes and also the introductory shot in Gravity (2013) by Alfonso Cuarón, lasting more than seven minutes. The sense of reality given by the sequence shot is also one of the features forming part of the style of various directors.

The aspiration of the feature film in a single shot sequence has existed at least since when Alfred Hitchcock filmed the thriller Rope in several sequence shots united by invisible cuts

The history of cinema started with short films in sequence shot, such as the single shot of 50 seconds in Tables Turned on the Gardener (L’arroseur arrosé, 1896) by the Lumière brothers which was the first comedy and fiction film. The aspiration to produce the feature film using a single sequence shot has existed at least since Alfred Hitchcock shot the thriller Rope (1948) in various sequence shots linked by invisible cuts. The digital revolution has made this aspiration achievable, with feature films being shot using a single sequence shot. Examples include Russian Ark (Russkij Kovcheg, 2002) by Alexander Sokurov, lasting 95 minutes, and Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (2014) by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, a sequence shot lasting nearly two hours with different special effects and with some interruptions through cutting.

Several directors are characterised by their predilection for the sequence shot, making it part of their style. Examples include Andrei Tarkovsky, especially in his final years in films such as The Sacrifice (Offret, 1985), Luis Garcia Berlanga in Plácido (1961) and Arturo Ripstein in all his films, including feature films such as Bleak Street (La calle de la amargura, 2016).

La ronde (The Round Dance)

La Ronde / La ronde | Max Ophüls, 1950, France

As we are warned by this narrator in the film's meta-cinematographic prologue, where the narrator becomes a demiurgic guide to this evocative circular story based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler, the round of love, the wheel, the carousel of good or bad luck in love, can start, for example, in Vienna, in the spring of 1900. The soldier Franz meets Leocadia, a prostitute, before ending up with a chambermaid, who moves on to the hands of a young man called Alfred who, in turn, has an affair with Emma, a married woman whose husband, the millionaire Charles, spends time with a dressmaker who is in love with the poet Robert, lover of a great actress who desires a young lieutenant in the dragoons, etc.

Portrait of Max Ophüls
The story of a movie only begins to exist for me when I can visualise it as a series of images; and that is something which does not happen very often. What may give rise to this vision might be almost anything: a novel, maybe a play or even a poem (…). The origin of this vision is everywhere and nowhere at the same time

Max Ophüls

(1902-1957)

Of Jewish origin, Max Ophüls (whose real surname was Oppenheimer) was born in the German town of Saarbrucken on 6 May 1902. After leaving his career in journalism, Ophüls began his work in the entertainment industry in the 1920s as an actor and theatre director. A decade later he entered the film industry as assistant to the Ukrainian director Anatole Litvak. His first job as a director was the comedy short I'd Rather Have Cod Liver Oil (Dann Schon Lebertran Lieber, 1931). Coinciding with the rise of Nazism in Germany, Ophüls moved to Paris, living in the French capital from 1933 and shooting several films in various European countries until the early 1940s, the most famous of these being Everybody's Woman (La signora di tutti, 1934). When the German army occupied Paris, the film-maker emigrated to Switzerland before moving to the United States in 1941, where he was forced to stay away from the film industry for many years, surviving with his family thanks to a charitable fund involving, among other exiled film-makers, William Wyler, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder and his faithful friend Robert Siodmak. His luck would change in 1946 when the great Preston Sturges, a fervent admirer of his melodramatic Liebelei (1933), interceded on his behalf and managed to find him work with the tycoon Howard Hughes. After a couple of unsuccessful projects, his first entirely American film was The Exile (1947), a swashbuckling film adventure produced, written by and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Then came little gems like Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), based on a novel by Stefan Zweig, Caught (1949) and The Reckless Moment (1949), the final two very close to film noir. Ophüls would return to Europe to film his last four masterpieces in France: The Round Dance (La Ronde, 1950), House of Pleasure (Le Plaisir, 1952), The Earrings of Madame de... (Madame de..., 1953) and Lola Montès (1955). Shortly afterwards, on 25 March 1957, the cinematographer who Truffaut once compared to Jean Renoir died of a heart attack in Hamburg. He was 51.