Just because Bazin theorized it, don't make it necessarily so...
But, the one long take I always think of is the beginning of Welles' "Touch of Evil"; for deep focus, generally "Citizen Kane" is cited; for both, the classic example is usually Renoir's "The Rules of the Game".

enjoy.

-----Original Message-----
From:   Film and TV Studies Discussion List on behalf of David Tetzlaff
Sent:   Sat 3/13/2004 2:31 AM
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Cc:	
Subject:        long takes

One of the central principles of film studies (or so it seems) is the
distinction between a Bazinian realistic aesthetic on one hand, and a
more Eisensteinian montage/presentational style on the other, with
classical Hollywood film, or at least classical cutting, somewhere in
the middle. The realist style is said to favor long takes and
deep-focus cinematography, to preserve 'the ontology of the
photographic image' by avoiding editing where possible.

However, I can't seem to bring to mind any specific films that employ
long takes that seem particularly realist to me. Most of the
interesting long takes I can think of call attention to themselves by
virtue of their length. For example, the long takes in Stranger Than
Paradise seem more formalist to me than realist.

So i have two questions. The first is practical:

Can people recommend specific fiction films (and better specific
scenes) where long takes are employed toward the end of a Bazinian
realism?

The second is theoretical:
Have the representational markers of 'realism' changed. Is the
absense of editing still what enables the integrety of a photographic
images 'realness' (if it ever was)? I am thinking especially of
'Dogme' influenced films, which seem very invested in a kind of
realism but have lots of cuts, and very obvious ones at that. My
hypothesis would be that all this descends from Direct Cinema
documentary, which established certain conventions of how
moving-picture photography is used to capture
life-as-it-actually-happens. The pragmatic necessities of Direct
Cinema dictated often jerky, hand-held camera work, narrow depth of
field, and often jerky edits -- which now seem almost universally
deployed in any narrative that wants to seem 'real' and 'urgent',
from the TV show 24 to the film Thirteen, just to take examples with
numbers instead of names.

Any thoughts?

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