The 12 greatest directors of long takes in history
Twelve filmmakers shaped the grammar of the long take as we know it today. Some invented it, others perfected it, and still others pushed it to its limits. Here is our ranking, ordered according to their combined impact on the technique and on cinema.
Summary
Our ranking method
The top 12 masters of the long take - from #12 to #1
Honorable mentions: 7 filmmakers who could have been there
FAQ - Your questions about these directors
Introduction
The long take isn't a school of thought. It's a technique that transcends all cinema, all eras, all aesthetics. A long take by Béla Tarr and a long take by Sam Mendes have almost nothing in common except the absence of a cut. And yet, if we take a step back, we can clearly see a lineage of filmmakers who have made the refusal to cut a central gesture of their directing.
Some filmmakers have only created one significant long take in their career, but what a long take it was! Others have made it the signature of an entire body of work. This ranking attempts to consider both aspects: depth (an entire career defined by the technique) and intensity (one or two shots that changed cinema)
You'll find the absolute classics: Scorsese, Cuarón, Kubrick, Welles. You'll also come across some choices that might surprise you. That's intentional. A universally accepted list would be pointless
For each director, you'll find their signature style, key films, a sourced anecdote from the set, and the rationale behind their inclusion. Most of the scenes mentioned have a detailed entry on the website that you can consult after reading.
1. Our ranking method
Three weighted criteria:
Impact on the grammar of the process. Did this director invent or redefined a way of filming without cutting? Hitchcock invents. Welles establishes. Kubrick systematizes. Cuarón digitizes.
Recurrence in the work. A filmmaker who uses the long take in several films leaves a more lasting mark than one who only attempts it once, even masterfully.
Cultural legacy. How often is this director cited by his successors as an influence? How many subsequent films bear his mark? Scorsese crushes everyone on this criterion.
Three criteria, but their weighting varies depending on the case. Sam Mendes only directed one long-take film (1917), but this single film had such an impact that it makes it into the top 6. Conversely, Béla Tarr never shot a spectacular long take, but his entire body of work is based on the long take, and his influence on contemporary auteur cinema is considerable.
One last thing: this ranking mixes genre films and art-house films, American and European cinema, technical prowess and radical minimalism. There isn't just one right way to film a long take. There are at least twelve.
2. The Top 12: from #12 to #1
#12. Béla Tarr (Hungarian, 1955-)
His signature : the contemplative, understated long take, devoid of apparent virtuosity. Where Scorsese showcases the technique, Tarr makes it disappear.
The Hungarian master pushes the long take to its extreme limits. Sátántangó (1994) lasts 7 hours and 30 minutes with only about 150 shots, averaging 3 minutes per shot, with some scenes reaching 12 minutes. The Turin Horse (2011), his last film, has 30 shots in a 2-hour and 25-minute runtime. The camera is never spectacular: it glides, it waits, it observes the rain falling on a Hungarian plain. The actors walk, drink, are silent. Time settles in. The viewer settles in with it.
An important technical detail: the hospital scene in Werckmeister Harmonies was long attributed to Steadicam shooting. This is incorrect. Rob Tregenza filmed this sequence with a dolly panther, which explains the uncanny stability of the movement and the almost ceremonial weight of the tracking shot.
Why this ranking ? Tarr is the father of all contemporary contemplative cinema (Reygadas, Alonso, Puiu). His influence is immense, but his audience remains small.
#11. Gaspar Noé (French, 1963-)
His signature style : the extreme sensory long take, often conceived as an uncomfortable physical experience for the viewer.
Noé uses the continuous shot as his tool of provocation. In Irreversible (2002), the tunnel scene lasts nine minutes in frenetic camera work; the viewer is trapped with the victim. Enter the Void (2009) invents a new visual grammar: the camera becomes a posthumous viewpoint floating above Tokyo. And Climax (2018) traps a troupe of dancers in a collective bad trip filmed in long takes of 10 to 40 minutes, with a camera that ends up tilted 180 degrees.
Noah rejects the narrative comfort offered by traditional editing. For him, the refusal to cut becomes a form of deliberate aesthetic violence; you are trapped in the scene, with no way out
Why this ranking ? Provocative, but each film reinvents the technique. A body of work entirely permeated by the long take.
#10. Andrei Tarkovsky (Soviet, 1932-1986)
His signature style: the spiritual, meditative long take, often deliberately slow.
Tarkovsky theorized what he called "sculpting time": cinema as an art of duration, not editing. For him, a long take is not a feat, but a philosophical necessity. The most famous example is the candle scene in Nostalghia (1983): for nine minutes, a man crosses an emptied thermal pool, protecting a small flame from the wind. The first takes failed. Tarkovsky stubbornly tried again until he achieved "the right tempo."
His films Stalker (1979), The Sacrifice (1986), and Andrei Rublev (1966) contain numerous similar long takes. They all share the same approach: a camera that refuses to comment on the action, allowing time to become the very substance of the film.
Why this ranking ? As the spiritual father of the contemplative long take. His influence on Malick, Sokurov, Zvyagintsev, and Reygadas is undeniable.
#9. Brian De Palma (American, 1940-)
His signature : the Hitchcockian suspenseful long take, often constructed like a complex spatial puzzle.
De Palma is probably the filmmaker who most systematically used the long take in American cinema from the 1980s to 2000. Snake Eyes (1998) opens with a 13-minute faux long take in an Atlantic City casino, divided into five visually choreographed chapters, timed to the second. Carlito's Way (1993) contains the famous Grand Central Station sequence. Blow Out (1981), Femme Fatale (2002), Redacted (2007), Body Double (1984)—each film contains at least one long continuous shot that becomes a tour de force.
De Palma explicitly claims Hitchcockian heritage. In his films, suspense is never built through editing; it is built through duration, through what the camera chooses to show and conceal in a single movement
Why this ranking : an absolute virtuoso of the technique, but with less cultural impact than the filmmakers who followed, because his baroque style has aged.
#8. Steve McQueen (British, 1969-)
His signature style : the theatrical long take with dialogue, static or almost static, like a filmed play.
McQueen, unlike Scorsese or Cuarón, rejects fluid virtuosity. His long takes are often direct dialogues, a camera that barely moves, two actors carrying a scene from beginning to end. The conversation between Bobby Sands and the priest in Hunger (2008) lasts 17 minutes. Four takes were filmed. On the third, the boom operator collapses from exhaustion. The fourth is the one. Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham lived together during rehearsals to perfect their dialogue.
Shame (2011) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) contain similar shots, held faces, filmed silences, a duration that becomes moral. McQueen reverses the dominant logic of the long take: it is no longer a performance of directing, it is a performance of acting.
Why this ranking ? A radically different approach that proves the long take can exist entirely without movement. A major counterpoint to the dominant canon.
#7. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Mexican, 1963-)
His signature : the entire film as a single take, achieved through invisible digital stitching.
Iñárritu, with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, invented a new cinematic language with Birdman (2014): an entire feature film conceived as a single continuous shot, actually assembled from dozens of 5- to 10-minute takes digitally spliced together. The illusion is complete and sustains the film from beginning to end. Winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Picture.
The Revenant (2015) contains several long takes lasting several minutes, notably the bear attack and the opening scenes in the river. Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003) used the long take as a narrative tool from their very beginnings. Iñárritu shares with Cuarón the same cinematographer (Lubezki) and the same obsession with continuous fluidity, to the point that one can speak of a contemporary Mexican school of the long take.
Why this ranking ? Birdman is a landmark work, but Iñárritu lacks the career depth of those who came before him. A peak of virtuosity, rather than a fully realized work.
#6. Sam Mendes (British, 1965-)
His signature style: the immersive, single-take film serving an absolute narrative constraint.
Mendes has only directed one single-take film in his career: 1917 (2019). But this film is perhaps the most ambitious contemporary culmination of the technique. Two hours spent in the shoes of two British soldiers tasked with saving 1,600 men, seemingly in real time, with Roger Deakins as cinematographer.
The preparation lasted nine months. Production designer Dennis Gassner built each trench to the exact length of the dialogue that was to take place there. The crew rehearsed with the actors for four months even before the sets were built. When Deakins read the script and saw the instruction "one shot" on the first page, he thought it was a typo
Spectre (2015) already contains a remarkable long take (the film's opening), but it's 1917 that earns Mendes a place on this list. A film, but what a film.
Why this ranking : Oscar win in 2020, a monumental and unique work. The best contemporary use of the long take constraint in service of storytelling.
#5. Orson Welles (American, 1915-1985)
His signature : the grammar of suspense in continuous shots, invented as early as 1958.
Welles is the true father of the modern artistic long take. The opening of Touch of Evil (1958) lasts 3 minutes and 20 seconds, shot with a crane. A bomb is placed in the trunk of a car. The camera follows the vehicle through a border town on the US-Mexico frontier. You know the bomb is going to explode. Welles refuses to cut. The tension builds second by second and culminates in the explosion. The entire modern grammar of suspense in a long take is there.
But Welles's contribution doesn't stop there. Citizen Kane (1941) already contains daring long takes (the Amberson living room scene, the editorial meeting). The Trial (1962), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Falstaff (1965) all exploit the long take with a virtuosity rare for the time. Welles thinks in terms of depth of field, duration, and continuity—three concepts that classical American cinema largely rejected in his era.
Why this ranking ? Without Welles, none of the previous ones exist. He established a grammar that cinema would adopt for 70 years.
#4. Alfred Hitchcock (British-American, 1899-1980)
His signature : the conceptual pioneer of the long-take film.
In 1948, Hitchcock directed the first film explicitly conceived as a single continuous shot: Rope. Eighty minutes of screen time, actually composed of ten-minute shots stitched together behind dark objects (the back of a jacket, a trunk, a chandelier). The technique was rudimentary and imperfect, and Hitchcock himself considered the experiment "an experimental failure."
He would try the experiment again with Under Capricorn (1949), another film constructed using long, continuous shots, but its critical and commercial failure convinced him to abandon the approach. His subsequent films would return to a more conventional editing style.
What matters is not technical mastery; that will come later. It's the conceptual gesture : Hitchcock was the first great filmmaker to consciously decide to reject editing for an entire film. Without this 1948 decision, none of his subsequent works would be conceivable. Neither Touch of Evil ten years later, nor Russian Ark half a century later.
Why this rank ? The founding father. His technical legacy is dated, his conceptual legacy is immense.
#3. Stanley Kubrick (American, 1928-1999)
His signature : the architectural steadicam, which transforms a space into a living entity.
Kubrick is the filmmaker who invented the modern language of the narrative Steadicam. With The Shining (1980) and the scene of Danny on the Big Wheel, he did far more than simply use a new technology: he invented a radically new way of filming a space. The camera doesn't follow Danny. It is the Overlook Hotel, the embodiment of a self-aware place that stalks the child through its own corridors.
Three years earlier, in Barry Lyndon (1975), he was already experimenting with the long shot by candlelight. Twenty-three years earlier, in Paths of Glory (1957), he invented the trench tracking shot that would directly inspire 1917 sixty-two years later. His career is marked by an obsession with controlled duration, geometric space, and architectural movement.
A frequently cited anecdote: Kubrick sent a telex to Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam, with a single question: "Is there a minimum height at which your device can be used?" Brown invented the "low-mode" specifically for the Big Wheel scene. When he arrived on the Elstree set, he discovered that Kubrick had built "an elaborate and expensive alternative to the Steadicam." Kubrick abandoned it as soon as he saw Brown's initial tests
Why this ranking ? Inventor of the modern grammar of the Steadicam. A body of work permeated by the technique over more than twenty years.
#2. Alfonso Cuarón (Mexican, 1961-)
His signature style : the breathtaking, immersive long take, often created in collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.
Cuarón is the contemporary master of the spectacular long take. Three major works dominate his career: Children of Men (2006), Gravity (2013), and Roma (2018). Three different grammars of the continuous shot: a real-time ambush in a car, weightless choreography in space, the rescue of children in the waves of a Mexican beach.
Children of Men likely contains the most technically audacious single-take shot ever filmed in a mainstream movie: the car attack, with a camera rotating 360° inside the vehicle thanks to a custom-built rig designed by the British studio Doggicam Systems. The Bexhill sequence, six minutes later, is even more complex: several hundred extras, the chaos of urban warfare, and a few invisible digital edits.
Gravity takes the technique to the next level: the first 13 minutes of the film are a single take digitally assembled from live-action footage and CGI. Sandra Bullock spent months confined in a light rig to allow Lubezki to recreate weightlessness. Roma returns to a more intimate approach: the Tuxpan beach scene is shot in a single take with Cuarón himself behind the camera, walking in the waves.
Why this ranking ? Three major works, three distinct grammars, a complete contemporary redefinition of the technique. An entire generation of filmmakers refers to him.
#1. Martin Scorsese (American, 1942-)
His signature style : the narrative steadicam as a tool for social immersion, the camera that draws you into a world.
Scorsese dominates this ranking for three combined reasons: the cultural impact of Copacabana in Goodfellas (1990), the recurrence of this technique in his work since the 1970s, and his direct influence on at least two generations of American filmmakers.
First, the Copacabana. Three minutes shot with a Steadicam, Henry Hill and Karen entering the club through the back door. The camera follows them through the kitchens, the hallways, the stairs, to their table which magically appears in the front row in front of the stage. Scorsese could have filmed this scene in a series of shots. He chose the long take for a specific reason: to make you physically feel what it's like to be a mobster. The doors open. Everyone recognizes you. The world is yours
But to reduce Scorsese to this single shot would be an injustice. Casino (1995) systematizes the grammar of the Copacabana on the scale of an entire film. The Irishman (2019) contains a sublime Steadicam opening in a retirement home, proving that his mastery of the technique has not aged. Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and Raging Bull (1980) already contain remarkable long takes. Over his fifty-year career, Scorsese constantly returns to the long take as his signature tool.
Finally, influence. Paul Thomas Anderson's opening sequence for Boogie Nights (1997) is explicitly a tribute to the Copacabana. The credits of The Player (1992) reference both Welles and Scorsese. An entire generation of American filmmakers (Fincher, Anderson, Aronofsky, Chazelle) bears the Scorsese imprint of the narrative Steadicam.
Why this ranking : maximum cultural impact + recurring work over 50 years + direct influence on his peers. No other filmmaker meets all three criteria at this level.
3. Honorable Mentions: 7 filmmakers who could have been there
Seven directors who didn't make the top 12, but who deserve a place in the conversation.
Alexander Sokurov (Russian, 1951-). With Russian Ark (2002), he created the most ambitious single-take film ever attempted: 96 minutes in one shot, 2,000 extras, and the entire Hermitage Museum. Not included in the top 12 because his work remains largely unknown outside of this film.
Park Chan-wook (South Korean, 1963-). The corridor sequence inOldboy (2003) invented the modern grammar of the long take of a fight scene. The entire lineage that followed—Daredevil, Atomic Blonde, The Raid—descends directly from it.
Cary Joji Fukunaga (American, 1977-). His raid sequence at the end of episode 4 of True Detective season 1 (2014) is the most famous television long take of all time. A single, memorable long take, but what a take!
Philip Barantini (British, 1980-). Director of Boiling Point (2021) and the series Adolescence (2025). Establishing a personal style of the contemporary social single-take shot. One to watch.
Paul Thomas Anderson (American, 1970-). The opening of Boogie Nights (1997) is a direct homage to the Copacabana. Magnolia (1999) uses several choreographed long takes set to Aimee Mann's "Wise Up." A filmmaker deeply influenced by Scorsese.
László Nemes (Hungarian, 1977-). Son of Saul (2015), winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, is entirely constructed from tight, life-size tracking shots in a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz. A moral use of the technique, without equal.
Robert Altman (American, 1925-2006). The opening of The Player (1992) is an eight-minute Steadicam sequence that explicitly addresses the industry it films. Virtuoso meta-cinema.
To delve deeper into the historical roots of all these filmmakers, the article " History of the long take in cinema" traces the evolution of the technique from Renoir and Ophüls to contemporary masters.
4. FAQ - Your questions about these directors
Why is Scorsese #1 and not Kubrick or Cuarón?
Because Scorsese combines all three criteria for ranking at a level no one else reaches. Maximum cultural impact (the Copacabana scene is the most studied long take in film history), recurring themes throughout his fifty-year career (from Mean Streets in 1973 to The Irishman in 2019), and direct influence on an entire generation of American filmmakers. Kubrick is more technically significant, Cuarón more spectacular, but neither has had such a widespread impact on contemporary cinema.
Why is Béla Tarr in the top 12 and not Andrei Tarkovsky in the top 5?
Tarkovsky is indeed more historically important than Tarr. But his direct influence on the contemporary long take is limited to the contemplative style, an important but restricted area. Tarr is ranked lower because his influence is even more circumscribed. Both deserve their place, but neither reaches the reach of the Anglo-Saxon filmmakers in the top 5-10
Why are there so few French filmmakers in this ranking?
Honestly, because the French tradition of the long take is different. Jean Renoir and Max Ophüls laid essential foundations, but the New Wave and French auteur cinema explored the contemplative long take (Bresson, Pialat, Dumont) rather than the virtuoso long take. Gaspar Noé, the Franco-Argentine filmmaker, is the exception. For a more complete exploration of this angle, an article dedicated to the long take in different national traditions is planned
Would a chronological order have been more accurate?
Perhaps, but that's not the approach taken in this article. We chose to classify them by their combined impact on the technique and on cinema, not by order of appearance. Hitchcock is chronologically the first, but he is neither the most technically influential (Kubrick, Cuarón) nor the most culturally influential (Scorsese). For a chronological reading, the article " History of the Long Take in Cinema" covers the topic period by period.
How do these filmmakers influence each other?
In a very identifiable way. Welles influences Scorsese, who influences Anderson, who influences Chazelle. Kubrick influences Cuarón, who influences Mendes. Tarkovsky influences Sokurov, who influences Nemes. Hitchcock looms large over De Palma, who looms large over an entire generation of American thrillers. It is this chain of transmission that structures the modern grammar of the long take; each filmmaker in the top 12 is both heir and influencer.
Will there be an update to this ranking?
Yes. The long take continues to evolve, particularly in TV series. Philip Barantini could break into the top 12 if his career follows its current trajectory. Young directors like Alfonso Ruizpalacios (A Model Police, Museo) are ones to watch. This list will be revised annually to reflect significant new works.
Conclusion
Twelve filmmakers. Twelve different ways of rejecting the cut. What's striking when compiling this list is the diversity of philosophies that coexist under the same technical constraint. Scorsese films power. Cuarón films survival. Tarkovsky films time. Noé films pain. Tarr films slowness. McQueen films faces. None of them makes the same kind of cinema. All of them reject the cut.
It's no coincidence that the technique is found in so many schools of thought. The long take belongs to no one; it waits for a filmmaker to have something to do with it. When that filmmaker appears, the technique reinvents itself each time. Sam Mendes couldn't have made 1917 without Rope, but his film has nothing to do with Hitchcock's. Alfonso Cuarón couldn't have made Children of Men without Goodfellas, but his film has nothing to do with Scorsese's. Each generation reinvents the refusal to cut .
This is probably what gives the process its enduring power. Every filmmaker who takes it up knows they are joining a tradition. They also know they must add something new, otherwise they will be invisible. It is this dual requirement—to inherit and to invent—that distinguishes the twelve directors in this ranking from all the others
👉 To delve deeper, plan-sequences.com offers over 100 detailed analyses of sequence shots, categorized by type, including behind-the-scenes anecdotes, technical choices, and insights into each scene. Want to defend your own choices and discuss the rankings? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
