Russian Ark (2002)
Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov
A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.
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What critics compared Russian Ark to
Essentially filmed in one long, two-hour shot, the film—which features the masterful cinematography of living legend Roger Deakins—is a cinematic feat rarely attempted, though not without precedent (Birdman, Rope, and Russian Ark are other examples of one-shot films).
It is not the first time this gimmick was used in a film – Alexander Sokurov’s “Russian Ark” got there earlier in 2002.
These titles include Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, the Best Picture Oscar winner Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), and Russian Ark, the latter actually filmed in one single take rather than just being crafted to appear that way.
There have been a few similar experiments over the years (the breathtaking Russian Ark perhaps being the most famous example), but recent efforts have seen the trick very nearly becoming a genre unto itself.
In 2000, Mike Figgis released the experimental drama Timecode ; two years later Alexander Sokurov made Russian Ark , a lyrical one-take journey through Russian history composed of a single Steadicam sequence shot in almost constant motion that deserves substantial credit as 1917 ’s technical predecessor.
Like "Russian Ark," but fast!
In 2002, Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov created "Russian Ark," a fantastical, 99-minute art-and-history tour of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, out of a single, flowing, uninterrupted camera shot, a feat made possible only by digital cameras.
Aleksandr Sokurov’s 2002 documentary Russian Ark created an elegant one-shot tour of the Hermitage Museum, but Victoria glides through the night in service of a story.
That’s been done before; back in 2002, during the infancy of the digital film revolution, “Russian Ark” offered a 96-minute take.
That bravura exploit (echoing Alexander Sokurov's documentary "Russian Ark") played out over 22 locations and needed the help of six assistant directors and three sound crews.
After Russian Ark, his 2002 tour-de-force set in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage, it’s the Louvre’s turn to be put under his whimsically intelligent historical magnifying glass.
Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov’s latest film, Francofonia, can be considered a companion piece to his best-known work, Russian Ark, in the sense that both of these cinematic meditations on history and art take place in great museums and share Sokurov’s distinctive style that is at once painterly, like that of an Old Master, and experimental.
And yet, a French version of Russian Ark this is not.
This was also the central idea of Russian Ark , the pièce de résistance of Sokurov’s career—a technical marvel, shot in one Steadicam take that mimicked the first-person of a time traveller (voiced by Sokurov himself) as he slipped through the centuries of history, grandeur, and suffering contained within the walls of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum.
Hitchcock (Rope) and Welles (Touch of Evil), Altman (The Player), Scorsese (Goodfellas) and the other masters of the one-take shot were always restrained by the fact that it's physically impossible to record more than twelve continuous minutes of film.
Alfred Hitchcock tried a trick like this with his 1948 film Rope, but -- both then and now -- film reels need to be changed after about 20 minutes.
Patented in Hitchcock's ''Rope'' (1948), the technique was nudged into the baroque realm of hothouse art with the amazing opening shot of Welles' ''Touch of Evil,'' followed by ''GoodFellas,'' the kickoff to every third De Palma film, and so on.
While Rope's technical bravado looks quaint when compared to a recent epic like Russian Ark, and its jaw dropping parade of a hundred extras, it isn't an entirely fair comparison.
One-take filmmaking has been tried before: Alfred Hitchcock attempted a similar stunt with his 1948 thriller "Rope," but he was forced to cheat since he was shooting on film and his cinematographers William V. Skall and Joseph A. Valentine had to reload the camera every 10 minutes.
The only movie I can think of that's like it is Hitchcock's brilliant tour de force, Rope.
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The device was perhaps most famously used by Alfred Hitchcock in his 1948 film, “Rope” (though that film does have several hard cuts between reels), and in Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 fantasy, “Russian Ark.”
Though the film – set over a few weeks – is quite clearly not performed as one unending shot a’la Russian Ark, the camera’s dreamy and eventually disorienting observance of Riggan’s unravelling works wonders.
(The single-shot movie to beat still is Russian Ark.) Iñárritu's try-too-hard mode of magical realism can be breathtaking, absolutely, and it also can backfire.
Interestingly, before Hardcore Henry came along, Russia could boast having made the one artistically successful first-person feature: Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 single-take stunt, Russian Ark.
Lanthimos and the great DP Robbie Ryan ( American Honey , Slow West ) conceive a claustrophobic, candle-lit look for The Favourite that evokes Russian Ark and Barry Lyndon if either had been occasionally shot through a fisheye lens.
Coupled with Kevin Stitt’s complex cutting, Cloverfield is a sustained triumph of expanding and contracting perspectives, its whip-pans from human-scale panic to skyscraper-toppling spectacle raising the bar set by Spielberg’s War of the Worlds—if not Sokurov’s Russian Ark.
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Gromov and his men - crude sniper Chvanov (Dmitriy Lysenkov), taciturn Nikiforov (Aleksey Barabash, "Russian Ark"), middle-aged Polyakov (Andrey Smolyakov) and the baby-faced Sergey Astakhov (Sergey Bondarchuk) - take control of a bombed out apartment building on the The Children's Circle Dance Fountain square, Polyakov killing a German threatening what they believe to be a young boy.
It’s far more impressive than the whole mind-numbing 96-minute single-take of Russian Ark (2002).