'The Passenger'

Although highly-regarded as a generally good film, The Passenger has one very special feature that places it in a different category.

In the final 10 minutes, director Michaelangelo Antonioni exectues what is called a penultimate long-take tracking shot.

The film is based around Jack Nicholson's character, a reporter in Africa seeking to do a story about a civil war and he can't get the information and interviews he needs. Meanwhile, his ex-wife is screwing some other dude.

When an acquiatance at his hotel dies, he switches his identity with the corpse's. It turns out the dead man was a gun runner for the rebel in this civil war. While his previous friends attempt to piece togethre his born identity's death (or life), others thinking he is the gun runner seek to kill him.

He checks into a hotel room and the long shot begins. The camera is on a ceiling rail and it goes out the barred window in to the courtyard of the hotel. At this point, the camera is attached to a hook on a crane and it goes around the courtyard for about seven minutes before rounding to Nicholson's ex-wife showing up. The camera pans to Nicholson's open window. There we see his body laying on the bed, dead. Killed for his adopted weapons-selling past that he never owned.

Taking long shots is not unnormal. Tons of directors do it. While doing Rope, Alfred Hitchcock wanted it tobe one tremendously long shot but the camera wouldn't take all the film.

Tidbits like the long shot would've been lost on a 15-year-old me, so I'm happy to be discovering all this film mumbo-jumbo now that I can appreciate it a bit more.