10 Most Impressive Movies Filmed in One Take for All Fans of Adolescence
These works demonstrate how a radical technical solution gives the director unique opportunities to interact with the viewers.
It seems that all the trends of modern culture demand that the dynamics of editing should make your head spin. All the more valuable are the rare gems – movies with record-breaking long shots or even shot without editing.
A unique event on TV was the release of Adolescence on Netflix – the first series where each episode was shot in one take.
In honor of the release of this intense, dramatic show, we decided to recall feature-length works that become truly immersive thanks to one-take shooting.
1. Boiling Point, 2021
Philip Barantini, the same director who made Adolescence, used a single take in his second feature four years ago. With this technical trick, he elevates the essentially simple plot to new emotional heights.
The focus is on a restaurant with all the hustle and bustle that goes with it: demanding customers, product shortages, picky restaurant critics. The viewer is not an outside observer, but a direct participant in this chaos, plunged headlong into it, rushing through all the events at full speed.
2. 1917, 2019
Sam Mendes has revolutionized the historical genre. The story of World War I is, by definition, something far removed from the viewer. But Mendes' war movie suddenly becomes alive, vibrant, and palpable.
The camera follows a soldier for an hour and a half as he runs across the front line, miraculously survives, and delivers vital information to a military camp that could save hundreds of lives.
1917 allows the viewer to slip into the skin of a young man who participated in the events of a hundred years ago, running towards death, horror and suffering for the sake of a ghostly chance at a brighter future.
3. Rope, 1948
Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first to make use of the single take. The most famous example is Rope, which tells the story of two friends who strangle their classmate with a rope, hide his body in a trunk, and then invite a number of mutual friends to their apartment, including the dead man's girlfriend.
Rope is in many ways an experimental project for Hitchcock. The director was testing the possibilities of color cinema and decided to stage the film as a play with a minimum of editing.
The film consists of ten montage shots, each 8-10 minutes long, the maximum possible at the time. To achieve continuity, Hitchcock planned the location of every object in the frame. And all scenes were carefully and repeatedly rehearsed.
4. Timecode, 2000
Master of radical solutions, Mike Figgis has always been known for his unconventional approach to artistic challenges. And he may have gone further than anyone else in experimenting with real-time action and single-take shots.
In Timecode, Figgis not only shows events unfolding in live mode, but also manages to allow the viewer to observe multiple storylines simultaneously. He achieves this with the help of a split screen. Thanks to this, the viewer sees all four stories in one frame.
In this case, the plot is not so important: the director and producer are in a crisis and are looking for a leading actress for their new project. The creative search is captured in the movie with such detail that a deep immersion into the emotional life of the characters is inevitable.
5. Enter the Void, 2009
Gaspar Noé's work is also filmed in one long take. The director enters a territory where most viewers and artists prefer not to tread: he tries to understand the mystery of death through cinema and to imagine what it is like to die.
Filming in one take, without editing, allows us to capture the transition of a person from one world to another, from life to death, from illusions and fantasies to darkness, emptiness and non-existence.
6. MadS, 2024
MadS is a wild horror experiment shot entirely in one take. Give Night of the Living Dead to the French and trust them with the approach of no pauses and no cuts, and you get the cinematic equivalent of an hour and a half of panic attacks.
Romain's day does not go as planned. A wounded woman jumps into his car, infecting him with blood and turning him into the living dead. Romain feels the first symptoms at a party.
His friends are in danger, including his girlfriend Anais. Armed liquidators drive around the area trying to contain the spread of the virus and declare a hunt for the infected.
7. Victoria, 2015
A young woman wanders through a European metropolis in search of adventure, and a camera captures every detail of the city.
Shot in one take, this charming indie drama is an ode to Berlin. The camera follows the main character through clubs and deserted night streets, from apartment to apartment, from one bar to another techno party.
At first, this labyrinth immerses the viewer in a deceptively romantic mood. But the further one goes, the more menacing Victoria's route becomes, and the darker the contours of Berlin itself become.
8. Russian Ark, 2002
Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark holds the title of the longest movie shot in one take: its running time is 96 minutes.
Since any mistakes made during filming could not be corrected in editing, Sokurov demanded that the entire one-and-a-half-hour take, with the participation of eight hundred extras and three orchestras, be filmed flawlessly.
Despite seven months of rehearsals, the film crew and the actors only succeeded on the fourth try.
9. Utøya: July 22, 2018
A film that once again reminds us how much cinema allows us to empathize, sympathize, and step into the shoes of others. And also – to rethink well-known stories. In this case – the terrible massacre committed by Anders Breivik on the island of Utoya and in the city of Oslo.
The viewer is invited to look at it not from the outside, but from the inside, from the point of view of a direct participant, one of the random victims. For an hour and a half, the camera follows a girl as she moves around the island and finds herself at the epicenter of terrible events.
10. Silent House, 2011
This is the case when an avant-garde artistic method turns out to be absolutely appropriate in the most popular of all genres – horror.
The plot of Silent House is simple and quite conventional: a haunted house frightens its new inhabitants, a father and daughter who are preparing to start its restoration, with its secrets.
But it is worth noting that Silent House is actually divided into long takes of 10-15 minutes each, which are spliced together to create the illusion of a single take. But even the illusion of one long shot turns the horror into an immersive show full of fear.
