Subjective and tour de force camera movements

[HerrSchreck]

Films made prior to the age of the Filmmaking Degree are fascinating study owing to the far more personal use of certain conceits and devices. Great filmmakers of the prior age (and of course those who created the supreme high art of the silent era) may not have ever--beyond working their way up through the ranks of the studio's ladder of tasks-- formally "studied" film at all, causing their choices to be far less predictable, and far more indiosynchratic. Filmmakers in the pre-degree era studied painting and literature, symphonies, woodcuts, etc, perhaps never studied anything at all beyond their own seething creativity & opinions about life, which is why the films of old masters crackle with such originality. Modern filmmakers who study films and other filmmakers to excess create films saturated with the conventions of film/other filmmakers.. causing their employment of these devices to appear conventional and entirely predictable, operate according to contemporary fads & trends (like the maddening jittery handheld trend of the present day)... turning an creative art into a craft.

Camera movement can be the biggest yawn in filmdom, yet it still to this day can create some of the most supreme tour de force moment in film construction when used with originality.

To my eyeballs, camera movement found it's birth in subjective terms in the year 1913 owing to two obvious canditates available to us: Pastrone's CABIRIA, as well as the work of Yevgeni Bauer, notably in 1913's TWILIGHT OF A WOMAN'S SOUL but more especially in AFTER DEATH with it's astonishing sustained backwards roll through a roomful of party guests, and tracking over the course of an entire approx 10 minute cartidge of film. It was the RUSSIAN ARK of the silent era, this moment. CABIRIA's work is notable as well, for the reason that the purpose behind the trackings (which occur with regularity)-- and with an unpredictable path through the staging (i e not following the physical advance of this or that character through a given scene)-- are not clear. The camera just moves, glides like a phantom through static scenes, prompted by unclear motivations. It never moves to, for example, maintain a vantage point from a character in motion. It is not as explainable as the later tracking shots in Griffith, say in BIRTH OF A NATION or INTOLERANCE, i e in BIRTH the vehicle-mounted camera racing in front of the charging Confederate army, adding dynamism to the rebel yell and charge until they plant their flag into the Union cannon, or the scenes in Jerusalem in INTOLERANCE where the camera tracks in the same way ahead of the crowd in the market, keeping just ahead of a moving camel and locals as they make their way around.

Of course the twenties force us to (with good reason) mention DER LETZE MANN, which to this day contain some of the most astonishingly original and artful camera movements in the whole history of the medium of film. My personal favorite movement in this most celebrated and important of landmark films is the moment when the hotel matron accompanies Janning's character, after he's been relieved of his doorman position and assigned to the lavatory duty, down the hallway on the way to the linen closet and ultimately down to the men's room. There is a moment wherein the camera, as it tracks along with them as they walk down the hallway, passes them by tracking faster than the actors. Reaching the end of the hall before they do, it sits and waits; then the characters re-appear into the frame.

This tracking shot is about as mysterious as the scene in Scorcese's TAXI DRIVER, where Travis is standing in a building lobby speaking into a pay phone attempting to win Betsy back after fucking everything up taking her to a X-rated flick... as he asks whether she's received his flowers, asks her out for refused date after date, and as the turn-downs accumulate, the camera glides horizontally away from Travis and down the hall, until it finds a 90 degree angle in the hallway leading down to the door of the street. We hear the convo continue offscreen until it finally concludes & Travis reappears rounding the hallway corner to head on out into the street.

Various theories have been elicited to explain the reasons behind these mysterious movements, which well exemplify the idea of "subjective" camera movement... that is, a movement which is not easily explained in straight, objective terms, i e physical ones (as mentioned above, i e maintaining a vantage point with a moving character to avoid having to cut and create another setup).

The zipping movements in all of Murnau, the work of FW Wagner for GW Pabst (LOVE OF JEANNE NEY in particular contains some astonishing camera movement as well as overall cinematography in what I consider Pabsts best film, plus DREIGROSCHENOPER which contains some wonderful tracking movements within the slum, particularly the early scene with Macheath, after he retreieves his cane from the window) and Lang (M and TESTAMENT MABUSE)... von Sternberg throughout his entire career; the astonishing, almost untoppable work of Khalatozov & Urusevsky; the stunning superfast tracking & stopping on a dime in Kurosawa... for example in REDBEARD; the opening tracking shot of the fabulously photographed Gaumont Briitsh Karloff vehicle THE GHOUL backing away from a magnified closeup of a man's lapel's fabric-sticthing dollying rearward at least 20 feet back into the wet, foggy streets of a deserted nighttime London; the iconic Mamoulian masterpieces of early sound mobile camera (itself almost an oxymoron, as the dawn of sound essentially hammered all cameras to the floor) including the astonishing masterworks APPLAUSE, CITY STREETS, and of course JEKYLL & HYDE; the fabulously fortuitous teeming of the imported-to-America Paul Leni with Gilbert Warrenton, resulting in the fantastic THE CAT & THE CANARY, and the masterpiece THE MAN WHO LAUGHS; the wonderfully oddball tracking shots of Roland West's sound films; the Murnauesque creeping camera of Masaki Kobayashi, well examplified by the opening of KWAIDAN drifting & floating in the deserted courtyard of the wife-spectre in THE BLACK HAIR ep.; other more modern examples of fabulous, phantom-like camera movements in, for example THE INNOCENTS.

I'd love to hear from a few specific voices here what they consider to be the greatest examples of the "unchained camera".

[Harvey Domino]

This tracking shot is about as mysterious as the scene in Scorcese's TAXI DRIVER, where Travis is standing in a building lobby speaking into a pay phone attempting to win Betsy back after fucking everything up taking her to a X-rated flick... as he asks whether she's received his flowers, asks her out for refused date after date, and as the turn-downs accumulate, the camera glides horizontally away from Travis and down the hall, until it finds a 90 degree angle in the hallway leading down to the door of the street. We hear the convo continue offscreen until it finally concludes & Travis reappears rounding the hallway corner to head on out into the street.

Love this shot, one of Taxi Driver's best (I hope to never learn he swiped it like he swiped the 360-degree pan in the garage from Godard). It's a great shot, though is it mysterious? The camera - and the director - and even the viewer at this point - know that Travis should not be calling Betsy, they know the "relationship" (such as it was) is over. The camera/director/viewer are moving on, ready to make their exit, but Travis stays where he is. I think it's the saddest shot in the film.

[HerrSchreck]

You'd be surprised at the variety of opinions about this shot. SOme say it's too embarassing or painful to watch Travis go through this and that is why we are directed away from seeing Travis-- a courtesy, like. I've always thought that the film is showing the viewer what Betsy is showing Travis-- the door. A little less polite than "It's time to move on," which sounds healthy i e a man coming to grips and recognizing the facts of his journey. Travis bursts into her work later on ripping into her, looking terrible, nearly getting arrested, and is driven towards weaponry, crazed states of mind & vengeance oriented behavior via his inabillity to swallow the facts of his life. He falls to pieces because he can't move on.

[tryavna]

To my eyeballs, camera movement found it's birth in subjective terms in the year 1913 owing to two obvious canditates available to us: Pastrone's CABIRIA, as well as the work of Yevgeni Bauer, notably in 1913's TWILIGHT OF A WOMAN'S SOUL but more especially in AFTER DEATH with it's astonishing sustained backwards roll through a roomful of party guests, and tracking over the course of an entire approx 10 minute cartidge of film. It was the RUSSIAN ARK of the silent era, this moment. CABIRIA's work is notable as well, for the reason that the purpose behind the trackings (which occur with regularity)-- and with an unpredictable path through the staging (i e not following the physical advance of this or that character through a given scene)-- are not clear. The camera just moves, glides like a phantom through static scenes, prompted by unclear motivations. It never moves to, for example, maintain a vantage point from a character in motion. It is not as explainable as the later tracking shots in Griffith, say in BIRTH OF A NATION or INTOLERANCE, i e in BIRTH the vehicle-mounted camera racing in front of the charging Confederate army, adding dynamism to the rebel yell and charge until they plant their flag into the Union cannon, or the scenes in Jerusalem in INTOLERANCE where the camera tracks in the same way ahead of the crowd in the market, keeping just ahead of a moving camel and locals as they make their way around.

Re. early camera movement, I'm surprised you didn't mention Walsh's Regeneration, Schreck, as I know you're a fan. Perhaps not as epic as Griffith's nor as elegant as Bauer's, but talk about idiosyncratic! The first time you watch it, you never know what to expect. For instance, in the scene where Mamie Rose finds out that Owen has been hiding Skinny in a closet, the camera moves in between Mamie and the D.A., almost cutting them out of the frame altogether, in order to focus on Owen's dejected exit through the door behind them. There are others, but that's the one that springs immediately to mind.

Of course, as I've said elsewhere, Walsh's camera always seems to move more than most of the other early Hollywood masters.

[GringoTex]

I want to throw Renoir in the mix. His pans/lateral tracking shots revolutionized the concept of profondeur champ from a "sideways" perspective. The party disintegration sequence at the end of Rules of the Game is the prime example of these breathtaking camera movements.

If I had to pick a single camera movement for sheer beauty, it would probably be Godard's pan-lateral track that follows Anna Karina out of her apartment and on to her balcony after she's murdered her lover in Pierrot le fou. Ten seconds evokes violence, tragedy, then melancholic freedom.

[Greathinker]

The thread's title made a shot from Scenes from a Marriage spring to my mind. Most probably know what I'm thinking of. It's when Erland Josephson has come back from a trip and he's slowly letting out information about his future plans, all the while the camera is sympathizing with Liv Ullmann-- then Josephson breaks the news that he's leaving her and moving out and the camera violently zooms in on Ullmann. Such great use of dramatic punctuation with the camera.

[hieronymus]

The "Bye Bye Barbara Jane" shot in Hitchcock's FRENZY, where a woman follows a man upstairs from the streets, unkowning he's a serial killer. Of course we know it, and the camera knows it--the camera refuses to follow them and silently tracks back (although I believe there is a hidden cut midway) back into the busy streets.

[Gordon]

Sergei Bondarchuk's, War and Peace (1964-1968) is teeming with audacious camera (bulky 70mm) moves. During the Battle of Borodino, the camera is lifted off the dolly and placed onto a crane and carried high into the air! Also great are the 'aerial-slide' shots, where the camera is on overhead wires and slides down at a fair pace capturing the mayhem and in one shot, an explosion sends dirt flying into the lens - oh, those crazy Russians!

Almost every shot, camera move and edit in Polanski's, Macbeth is perfect.

The opening shot in John Carpenter's, Halloween, though it features two invisible cuts, remains impressive.

Dario Argento's films all contain audacious shots, but it is Opera that contains his most dizzying moment, where the perspective of a raven is simulated using a complex rigging that spirals downwards at a decent speed. I can't recall ever seeing a similar shot in another film.

The opening to John Frankenheimer's, Seconds remains unsettling, setting the mood for the haunting story that follows. I love the ingenuity of cinematographers and camera operators in the pre-Steadicam days. On Seconds, they hid the camera in a suitcase, used wheelchairs and it has some skilled hand-held work. The cinematographer, James Wong Howe also pioneered the use of rollerskate photography on Body & Soul.

[marty]

The tour-de-force ending of Antonioni's The Passenger in one local camera tracking movement that last for about ten minutes.

[Tom Peeping]

A number of scenes in Soy Cuba (Kalatozov) are mastershots of that kind. Among them, two spring to mind: the scene of the beauty contest on the hotel roof where the camera starts with the contestants, tracks down a few floors of the building, moves along a poolside and jumps with a swimmer in the swimming-pool (with underwater filming) & the street funeral scene where the camera is in a cigar factory, gets out to the terrace and moves from the building floating in mid-air above a street where a funeral parade is taking place. Unforgettable.

[devlinnn]

While not a complete original in the use of camera movement with respect to Schreck's list, I find it hard to go past the work of Terence 'dolly-tracks of my tears' Davies. In criminally too few films to choose from over the past 30 years, one can find dozens of examples where the camera almost has a magical connection to his spirit, heart and melancholic sensibility. Genre-flecting to Ophuls, his left-to-rights, right-to-left, slow moves in, slower moves out makes life worthwhile.

Two favourites from The House of Mirth - the justly acclaimed 'Mozart passage' as we leave the East Coast, cross the Atlantic to arrive in Venice - with the use of simple fades as the camera glides through empty rooms, gardens, lakes and seas, we want the shot to go on forever

Spoiler

- the simplicity of Lily's last moments, bottle in hand, the camera moving down with heartbreaking empathy as she falls to her pillow. I could swear the camera pulses in movements with faded hope, it's heart with hers, moving down to her hand, then a fade to white...

[justeleblanc]

The short but amazing camera movement in THE EXORCIST just after Linda Blair steals the cookie from the cookie jar and her mom playfully wrestles it from her in the hallway, the camera moves forward coming in from the other room and stops just a few feet from the action. I've always thought this was the POV of the DEVIL, and it's pretty fucking creepy.

[jt]

The tour-de-force ending of Antonioni's The Passenger in one local camera tracking movement that last for about ten minutes.

I totally second this, first time I saw it I was trying to mentally speed the tracking up to see what had happened. Also, it's probably not 'tour de force' but I always liked the beginning of PTA's 'Hard Eight', where the camera follows Philip Baker Hall into the diner. Before we know who he is, what he looks/ sounds like etc, we already feel a connection with him.

[foggy eyes]

the work of FW Wagner for GW Pabst (LOVE OF JEANNE NEY in particular contains some astonishing camera movement as well as overall cinematography in what I consider Pabsts best film

I was floored by this a few weeks ago! The busy fluidity of the camera movement is breathtaking, sweeping you into the action and at times leaving not a second to come up for air. Masterful stuff.

[HerrSchreck]

Foggy-- how about the moment in NEY where Jeanne is on location in Paris with her beau sitting on some steps in a 2shot, and the camera pulls back about a football field away from them to reveal them as simply two more souls in a great urban mass?... or of course the auto driven camera catching the reuniting in Paris from both pov's, he running at top speed on one side of the fence, Jeanne on the other in the car, until they finally link up.

On SOY CUBA, I did mention in the opening post how virtually unbeatable were the combination of Khalatozov & Urusevsky; perhaps the greatest melding of melodrama and fidelity to the highest cinematic art (tightrope walk for even the greatest of directors) lies in THE CRANES ARE FLYING, which satisfies weepy grandmothers as well as hardcore devotees of obscurest, uncommercial avant garde & expressionistic cinema.

Tryavna, yes REGENERATION definitely. In that earliest period, I didn't mention this and many many other silent era examples since the development of the subjective moving camera by that time was already a couple years old vis the Italians & Bauer.. sadly REGENERATION remains a neglected masterpiece despite being available on VHS & DVD for years. Maybe Kino picking up the reins from Image (Kino had the original vhs on it, and Image has had a dvd for years which I still see in stores) will spark some new interest. Theyve been saying in their newsletters & catalogs that it's "coming soon".

[zedz]

A great topic, and we'll probably all be thinking of examples for years to come.

Tarkovsky's work is full of moments of sublime, unexpected camera movement - and on-screen movement. The way the tracking of the camera works alongside the movement of the wind and the objects rolled over on the table (in slow motion) in that lovely dream-shot of Mirror is breathtaking, and I adore the closing backward track (and concealed forward zoom) through the trees in the same film.

This thread should really be dedicated to Miklos Jancso: his films are nothing but dazzling freed-camera movements, to such an extreme that the roving camera eye occupies the central place occupied in more conventional films by the protagonist.

More:

The POV tree felling in Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, another film full of unexpected camera activity.
The panicked reverse track away from the stairwell in Mr Arkadin: the camera expressing the dread the audience is supposed to feel. Interesting how the almost identical move in Frenzy conveys a quite different mood by being so much slower and measured.

The anticipatory teapot swivel of Dragnet Girl. Before several scenes in Joji's apartment begin, Ozu tracks around the looming foreground teapot (or substitute object) to 'set himself up' square in front of the door. And this film also has that exhilarating, speedy, low, low track past a swinging jazz band (watch where you spin that double bass!) onto the dance floor.

The eerie "Vierney Glide" through all those Resnais films and settings (libraries, hotels, plastics factories, Auschwitz). This characteristic movement is so hypnotic and charged it forces a deeper engagement with the film, but not in any specific way (this movement means this) - it just drags you in there.

The Beckett / Kaufman / Keaton / Schneider (you can squabble among yourselves about the correct order of acknowledgement) Film is a paragon of mysterious (but ultimately meaningful) camera movement. (Now this should really cross-reference with the 'Cinematic ruckenfigur' thread!)

It's hard to find similarly bravura feats of camerawork in today's technologically-endowed industry, but it's still possible. The most incredible and poetic use of motion-control technology (and CGI-enhanced cinematography) I know of is Michel Gondry's video for Kylie Minogue's "Come into My World." He's not using the available technology as a means for making the physically and technically difficult achievable, but as a tool for imagining and realising previously unimaginable realities. And the physical shoot that underlies the finished work is itself a dazzling technical achievement (a single 1440+ degree track / pan).

Still in music video land, I have to tip the hat to the great sui generis camera movement that occurs several times in the video for Cabaret Voltaire's "Sensoria" (by Peter Case?): the camera rises over the landscape in a towering crane shot then loses the crane and keeps going right overhead to land (upside down) on the other side of the action: a 180 degree arc. An ingenious cheap effect that I don't recall having seen repeated.

[Michael]

And Demy's exultant heart racing tracks.

Can you give out some examples? I'm pretty obsessed with his Lola and I'm trying to single out some tracks from that film.

[Scharphedin2]

Still in music video land, I have to tip the hat to the great sui generis camera movement that occurs several times in the video for Cabaret Voltaire's "Sensoria" (by Peter Case?): the camera rises over the landscape in a towering crane shot then loses the crane and keeps going right overhead to land (upside down) on the other side of the action: a 180 degree arc. An ingenious cheap effect that I don't recall having seen repeated.

WHOA!! I really enjoy this thread -- and the fluid camera in so many films. I was debating what if anything I could contribute, and thinking about those crazy vertiginous arc/crane shots in "Sensoria" -- and then you throw it out there. This video blew me away, when I was a youngster.

[Cinesimilitude]

please tell me oh wise ones, who did Gaspar Noe rip off for Irreversible or was that entirely new?

[zedz]

Another one just came to me. It's about as low-tech and simple as you can get, but in its context it comes out of nowhere and hits you in the gut.

It's at the very end of Pialat's La Gueule ouverte. Monique Melinand has died of cancer (the previous eighty minutes have been an emotionally raw deathwatch) and the fractured family have concluded the small-town wake. We see, from a low angle, the adult children trying to comfort their inconsolable father, Roger, (who'd been a complete arsehole towards Monique when she was alive) in front of his store. He bats them away and retreats indoors. They disperse. Car doors slam, and the camera accelerates away from the store (it's hooked to the back of their car). The little shopfront and its street recede in the distance. So far, so good, but it's what happens next that makes the shot so powerful. Nothing. The shop continues to recede, getting blocked by buildings. The camera / car stops briefly to give way, then turns into another street and keeps driving, while we keep looking back. And we keep looking back until the car has left the village entirely.

Throughout the rest of the film, Pialat has been forcing us to look at things we normally wouldn't: at its most benign, it's the sublime early scene in which we sit and watch mother and son, having just learnt her prognosis, sitting and listening to a favourite piece of music; at its most repulsive, we witness Roger's borderline pedophilic leering at his customers. For this finale, Pialat conveys the same message in an unexpectedly lyrical mode. It's an extremely complex shot. All at once it's an intoxicating visual flourish (the flight of Monique's soul?), a steely, obsessive backwards gaze (fixated, implicitly, on Roger and what went on in the marriage), and - quite literally - the escape of the children back to their own miserable (but arguably less conflicted) lives.

(And that flight of the soul idea reminds me of the glorious upside-down / overhead 'escaping' shot at the end of the Polish section of Double Life of Veronique (after which the movie's all downhill). )

[zedz]

Still in music video land, I have to tip the hat to the great sui generis camera movement that occurs several times in the video for Cabaret Voltaire's "Sensoria" (by Peter Case?): the camera rises over the landscape in a towering crane shot then loses the crane and keeps going right overhead to land (upside down) on the other side of the action: a 180 degree arc. An ingenious cheap effect that I don't recall having seen repeated.

WHOA!! I really enjoy this thread -- and the fluid camera in so many films. I was debating what if anything I could contribute, and thinking about those crazy vertiginous arc/crane shots in "Sensoria" -- and then you throw it out there. This video blew me away, when I was a youngster.

Now, was this combined with a fish-eye lens as well, or have I projected that onto it? (Erk, there goes another one: Seconds - I'll let someone else wax ecstatic about James Wong Howe)

I can't believe now that it took me so long back then to figure out how they did it with no visible apparatus. Sometimes the best tricks are the simplest.

[Michael]

The short but amazing camera movement in THE EXORCIST just after Linda Blair steals the cookie from the cookie jar and her mom playfully wrestles it from her in the hallway, the camera moves forward coming in from the other room and stops just a few feet from the action. I've always thought this was the POV of the DEVIL, and it's pretty fucking creepy

Excellent. There's a shot with the similiar effect in L'avventura. Right after Vitti and her friend leaving the empty village with the white church, there is a shot creeping slowly through an alley toward the empty piazza. What the fuck is that? It creeps me so much that I can't even explain how.

Start with Baie des Anges. The camera just flying to Michel Legrand's music, a sublime movie, I just love it. (And Lola too and, well Demy.)

Never heard of Baie des Anges (Bay of Angels). But I will make sure to watch it no later than next week.

[Bajaja]

To all the classics in this thread I would like to add the wonderful constant fluid motion of camera in Bertolucci's Besieged and in Die Verwandlung (Metamorphosis), an excellent rendition of the Kafka's story made by Jan Nemec in 1975 for West German TV (run time of 55 min). The camera was Gregor Samsa, whom we, the viewer, never see, if I recall correctly. The cinematographers were Nicole Gasquet, who is unkown to me, and Thomas Mauch, who is well known to any Herzog fan. I would give a lot for a DVD of this (Bikey, anyone?).

[tryavna]

Dreyer deserves mention in this thread, too. There are those wonderful circular camera moves in both Ordet and Gertrud. There's also the camera-turning-upside-down trick as the mob storms the castle in Passion of Joan of Arc. (Is that similar to what goes on in the Sensoria video, Zedz or Scharph? I haven't seen it.) But my favorite Dreyer camera move -- or stop, to be precise -- is when the camera chooses to stop following the motorcycling couple when they take the wrong fork in They Caught the Ferry.

[GringoTex]

Dreyer deserves mention in this thread, too. There are those wonderful circular camera moves in both Ordet and Gertrud.

There's also his "tracking in one direction while panning in the opposite direction" shots in Day of Wrath, which Rosenbaum claims is the first instance of that kind of shot in cinema history.