Top 20 Best Long Takes of All Time
Twenty uncut scenes that changed cinema. You will understand why these long takes remain etched in the memory of all those who have seen them, what makes them technically extraordinary, and what you can learn from them for your own projects.
Summary
Why rank the best long takes of all time?
The ranking: 20 unforgettable long takes
What these long takes have in common
Mistakes to avoid if you try your own
FAQ
Conclusion
1. Why rank the best long takes of all time?
A long take is a gamble. The director decides not to cut. No editing to correct a mistake, no shot-reverse-shot to restart the rhythm. Everything happens in a single take, or at least, that's the illusion you're given.
Some of these shots last thirty seconds. Others, ninety minutes. But they all share one thing in common: they trap you in the moment. It's impossible to look away. The film's time becomes your time.
This ranking brings together the best long takes of all time, those that have marked the history of cinema through their technical audacity, narrative power, or simply the thrill they provide. For each one, we analyze what happens on screen, how it's done, and why it works so well.
Whether you're a film buff, a film student, or a videographer looking for inspiration, this list is for you. Film lovers will find essential classics and hidden gems. Creators will find practical techniques to reuse, from Oldboy's low-budget rail camera to Victoria's Canon C300.
2. The ranking: 20 unforgettable long takes
#20 Come Back to Me (2007) The beach at Dunkirk
Five and a half minutes on the beach at Dunkirk, without a single cut. Steadicam cuts through the chaos: singing soldiers, a carousel being dismantled, horses being slaughtered like ghosts. The shot doesn't depict the war. It makes you walk right into it. The scene required a thousand extras and a full day of filming on Redcar Beach, England. See the detailed article on the website
#19 The Player (1992) The 8-minute opening
Robert Altman opens his film with an eight-minute tracking shot that traverses a Hollywood studio. Characters enter and exit the frame, storylines intersect, and, in a deliberate nod to his earlier work, two characters discuss famous tracking shots, including the one from Touch of Evil. Eight uncut minutes to establish an entire universe. Altman is telling you: "I know my stuff, and I'm going to prove it to you without a safety net." See the full article on the website.
#18 Oldboy (2003) The Corridor
Park Chan-wook films a fight in a narrow corridor. A single, lateral shot, like a side-scrolling video game. Oh Dae-su advances, hammering his way through a dozen opponents. No polished choreography here, just raw, breathless, clumsy brutality. It's precisely this clumsiness that makes the scene believable. The shot lasts about three minutes, filmed over three days to get the final take.
Pro tip : The lateral tracking shot in Oldboy is a textbook example for low-budget filmmakers. No need for a Steadicam or gimbal; a simple track and a corridor are all you need to create an iconic scene. See the detailed article on the website.
#17 Gravity (2013) The first 17 minutes
Alfonso Cuarón opens Gravity with a seventeen-minute single take. Debris crashes into the station, Sandra Bullock spins in mid-air, the cosmos is oppressively silent. Except this shot doesn't really exist. The actors' faces are real, but almost everything else is digital. Emmanuel Lubezki and VFX supervisor Tim Webber created the illusion of a continuous shot from dozens of layers of images. Is a 100% digital single take still a single take? The answer matters less than the effect. And the effect is devastating. See the detailed article on the website
#16 Boogie Nights (1997) The Opening at the Club
Paul Thomas Anderson was 26 when he opened Boogie Nights with this three-minute tracking shot in a nightclub. The camera enters through the sign, moves down into the club, introduces a dozen or so characters, and sets the scene for the entire film. It's unabashedly Scorsese, and Anderson makes no secret of it. But the shot has its own energy: the disco atmosphere, the fluid camera work, and the succession of characters create a clockwork mechanism. See the detailed article on the website.
#15 The Turin Horse (2011) The entire film
Béla Tarr doesn't do things by halves. The Turin Horse contains only 30 shots in its 2 hours and 26 minutes of film. Some are over ten minutes long. The camera follows an old man and his daughter through their daily routine: getting dressed, eating potatoes, fetching water while the wind blows relentlessly. There's almost nothing to see. And yet, you can't look away. The long take becomes a tool of hypnosis. Time stretches out, repetition envelops you, and something essential is revealed in the duration.
#14 Snake Eyes (1998) The first 13 minutes
Brian De Palma opens Snake Eyes with what looks like a thirteen-minute tracking shot. Nicolas Cage walks through a crowded casino, encounters dozens of characters, watches a boxing match, all in an apparent continuous flow.
In reality, De Palma uses invisible cuts, moments where the camera moves in front of a back or a pillar to mask the break. The result is stunning. The viewer thinks they are seeing a single shot. It's the art of the faux long take and a masterclass in directing.
Pro tip : Invisible cuts are the most common technique for creating the illusion of a single, continuous shot. Ideal cut points include: passing in front of a dark wall, a quick whip pan, or a silhouette that fills the frame. Birdman and 1917 are full of them. See the detailed article on the website.
#13 Hunger (2008) The 17-minute conversation
Steve McQueen sets up his camera and doesn't move it. Seventeen minutes. A static shot. Two men sitting at a table. Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and a priest (Liam Cunningham) are discussing the hunger strike.
No movement, no music, no effects. Just two actors performing a scene in real time, with an intensity that gradually builds. McQueen had asked Fassbender and Cunningham to rehearse the scene for weeks before filming. The result is exceptionally powerful.
Proof that the long take doesn't need movement to be powerful.
#12 Birdman (2014) The "one-shot" film
Alejandro González Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki conceived Birdman to give the impression of a single two-hour take. The camera follows Riggan Thomson backstage at a Broadway theater, without ever seeming to cut.
In reality, the film is composed of ten- to fifteen-minute shots linked by invisible cuts, passages in shadow, rapid pans, and narrative fades to black. Lubezki used an Arri Alexa M, compact enough to navigate the confined spaces of the theater.
The result: constant anxiety. The viewer is glued to the character, never able to step back. The long take as a psychological prison. See the detailed article on the website
#11 Rope (1948) The first feature film shot in a single shot
Alfred Hitchcock shot Rope in ten ten-minute takes, the maximum length of a film reel at the time. The cuts are concealed in zooms on the backs of the characters or on the lid of the trunk.
The concept was revolutionary in 1948. Hitchcock wanted the film to unfold in real time, in a confined space where two students hide a corpse while entertaining guests. The technical constraint becomes a tool for suspense: every second brings the discovery closer.
Hitchcock himself called the film a failed experiment. He was wrong. Rope paved the way for everything that would follow on this list. See the full article on the website
#10 Pieces of a Woman (2020) The 24 Minute Childbirth
Kornél Mundruczó opens Pieces of a Woman with a 24-minute single-take shot that films a home birth in real time. Martha (Vanessa Kirby), her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf), and a substitute midwife (Molly Parker) go through the stages of labor: contractions, position changes, moments of panic, nervous jokes to keep going. And then the baby is born. And then the baby dies.
The shot leaves you no escape. No cuts to catch your breath, no ellipses to skip over the drawn-out minutes. Cinematographer Benjamin Loeb follows the actors with a gimbal in an apartment lit with practical lights, using a 360° approach; the camera can go anywhere, and the actors can go wherever they want. Almost no digital effects: only a ceiling light and a minor imperfection on Kirby's prosthetic belly were retouched in post-production.
The film was born from a personal experience: Mundruczó and screenwriter Kata Wéber each lost a child. The scene had originally existed on stage, in a play staged in Poland in 2018. For the film, the crew shot six takes over two days, four on the first day, two on the second. It is the fourth take, the last of the first day, that appears in the film. Loeb explained that the raw energy of day one was impossible to replicate: the technically perfect take of day two was "too perfect for its own good."
What makes this single-take shot unique in this ranking is that it relies on no impressive camera work, no spectacular sets, no stuntmen. Just three actors in an apartment, in real time, going through something devastating. Kirby won the Best Actor award at the 2020 Venice Film Festival for this performance. When you watch the scene, you understand why there's nowhere to hide in a 24-minute shot.
#9 Victoria (2015) 138 minutes, one take
Sebastian Schipper shot Victoria in a single 138-minute take. No invisible cuts. No VFX. A true two-hour continuous shot, filmed between 4:30 and 7:00 a.m. in the streets of Berlin.
Sturla Brandth Grøvlen's camera follows Victoria, a young Spanish woman, as she leaves a club, meets a group of Berliners, and finds herself caught up in a robbery. The film was shot in its entirety three times; the third take is the one that was released in theaters.
The technical achievement is secondary. What's striking is theintimacy. Without editing, the actors can't fake it. Every emotion is real. When Victoria cries, Laia Costa really cries, at 6 a.m., exhausted after two hours of non-stop acting.
Pro tip : Victoria proves that an ultra-long tracking shot is possible with lightweight equipment. Grøvlen used a Canon C300 with a minimalist stabilizer. No heavy Steadicam, no crane, just a tireless operator and good preparation. See the detailed article on the website.
#8 Goodfellas (1990) The entrance to the Copacabana
The absolute benchmark. Martin Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus follow Henry Hill and Karen through the kitchens of the Copacabana in a three-minute Steadicam sequence. We enter through the service entrance, cross the kitchens, descend a staircase, pass waiters, and arrive at a table that magically appears in front of the scene.
The shot doesn't depict an action, it depicts a status. Henry Hill isn't waiting, isn't standing in line, isn't paying anyone. He is someone. And the long take makes you feel that power. Karen is impressed. You are too.
The scene was filmed in eight takes. The reason for most of the retakes: a waiter who missed the timing of the table. The plan works because every extra, every waiter, every doorway entry is choreographed to the quarter of a second. See the detailed article on the website
#7 Russian Ark (2002) 96 minutes, one shot, 2000 years of history
Alexander Sokurov filmed Russian Ark in a single 96-minute throughout the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. More than 800 actors and extras, 33 rooms traversed, 2000 years of Russian history.
The film was shot with a Sony HDW-F900, one of the first HD digital cameras, mounted on a Steadicam operated by Tilman Büttner. There was only one chance: the Hermitage had granted just one day of filming. Four attempts were made, but only the last one was usable.
The result is hypnotic. We move from an 18th-century ball to an empty 20th-century room, without transition. The long take becomes a time machine.
Russian Ark was also a technological turning point. It was one of the first films to demonstrate that digital technology wasn't just used to imitate film; it opened up possibilities that film physically prohibited. No reel in the world could hold 96 continuous minutes.
#6 1917 (2019) The total illusion
Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins conceived 1917 to resemble a single, two-hour take. The film follows two British soldiers crossing no man's land to deliver a message. The camera never leaves them.
Deakins used an Arri Alexa Mini LF with wide-angle lenses to capture long takes in the narrow trenches. Invisible cuts were concealed within dark passages, explosions, or rapid pans. Each continuous shot lasted between four and eight minutes.
The effect is total: the urgency of the mission becomes physical. The viewer walks, runs, crawls with the soldiers. There are no breaks to catch their breath. The film's timeframe is the timeframe of war.
What 1917 demonstrates above all is the maturity of seamless transitions as a technique. In 1948, Hitchcock's cuts in Rope were visible to a trained eye. In 1998, De Palma's in Snake Eyes were skillful but noticeable. In 2019, Deakins' cuts are practically undetectable, even with careful searching. Seventy years of perfecting the same art. See the detailed article on the website
#5 Touch of Evil (1958) The 3-minute 20-second opening
Orson Welles opens Touch of Evil with a three-minute-twenty-second. A bomb is placed in the trunk of a car. The camera ascends a crane, follows the car through the streets of a border town, passes pedestrians, descends back to street level, and the car explodes.
In 1958, it was unprecedented. The crane, the extras, the timing of the car, the border crossing, everything had to be perfectly coordinated. The suspense arises from the discrepancy between what the viewer knows (the bomb is there) and what the characters don't know.
This is the foundational long take of modern cinema. Every director on this list owes it something. Altman references it in The Player. De Palma takes it further in Snake Eyes. Cuarón reinvents it in Children of Men. Touch of Evil is point zero. See the detailed article on the website.
#4 Children of Men (2006) The Car Ambush
Alfonso Cuarón and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki placed the camera inside a car for an ambush filmed in a single four-minute. The camera rotates 360° inside the vehicle, moving from one character to another, and follows the action without ever cutting, while assailants attack the car.
To make this shot possible, Lubezki used a specially designed rig that allowed the camera to pivot freely within the confined space. The vehicle's roof could be detached and reattached as needed for the shot. The result gives the viewer the impression of being a trapped passenger, not an observer.
Children of Men contains another, even more impressive long take, the Battle of Bexhill, which tops this list. The film is a masterclass in the genre.
Pro tip : Filming in a confined space (car, elevator, hallway) is one of the best ways to create immersion in a single take. The viewer is trapped with the characters; it's impossible to "escape" the frame. It's the claustrophobia that creates the tension. See the detailed article on the website.
#3 Soy Cuba (1964) The funeral procession and the swimming pool
Mikhail Kalatozov and his cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky created sequence shots in Soy Cuba that still defy comprehension sixty years later.
The funeral procession : the camera descends from one building, crosses the crowd, and ascends another, all without cuts, in 1964, without a Steadicam, without a drone, without digital effects. How? A system of cables and relays between operators, passing the camera from hand to hand.
The swimming pool : the camera follows a woman in a bikini, dives into the water with her, continues filming underwater, and then resurfaces. 1964. With Soviet equipment.
These plans remained unknown in the West for decades. When the film was rediscovered in the 1990s, directors like Scorsese and Coppola couldn't believe their eyes. And rightly so.
What makes Soy Cuba unique in this ranking is that it's the only film where long takes were shot using techniques that no one has ever been able to replicate in the same way. Not because technology has evolved, but because the level of human risk involved has become unacceptable for a modern production. See the detailed article on the website
#2 Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) The opening at the bar
Béla Tarr, him again. The opening of Werckmeister Harmonies: a drunken man choreographs the other patrons of a bar to mimic the movement of the planets. The shot lasts for more than ten minutes. The camera slowly circles the bodies, hypnotic.
And a seedy bar transforms into a solar system.
Tarr doesn't film action, he films the passage of time. And within that time, something cosmic appears. No effects, no spectacular technical feats. Just duration, bodies, and a stroke of genius.
This shot is perhaps the most difficult to explain of the entire list. On paper, nothing extraordinary happens. But watch it, and you'll understand why the long take is sometimes less a technique than a revelation.
#1 Children of Men (2006) The Battle of Bexhill
If a single sequence shot were to summarize the power of this technique, it would be this one.
Six minutes in a refugee camp in the midst of urban warfare. The camera follows Theo (Clive Owen) through gunfire, explosions, smoke, and screams. Blood splatters the lens, and Lubezki holds the shot.
It has everything. The technical mastery: dozens of stunt performers, real explosions, timing down to the tenth of a second. The total immersion: the viewer is in the thick of the battle, not watching a screen. And the pure emotion: when the fighting stops at the sight of the baby, the silence is deafening.
The blood on the lens says it all. In any other film, this "mistake" would have been cleaned up in post-production or fixed with a retake. Lubezki and Cuarón kept it. Because reality doesn't stop when something splashes into your field of vision. And because this long take isn't striving for perfection, it's searching for truth.
Children of Men proves that this technique can achieve a power that traditional editing can never match. When the camera doesn't cut, reality doesn't either. And it's in this continuity that emotion becomes visceral. See the full article on the website
3. What these sequence shots have in common
Twenty long takes, seventy years of cinema, dozens of different techniques. And yet, constants emerge.
Real time creates empathy. When the camera doesn't cut, the viewer experiences the scene at the same pace as the character. No shortcuts, no ellipses. It's this temporal continuity that generates immersion. Bexhill exhausts you because you walk with Theo for six minutes. The childbirth scene in Pieces of a Woman devastates you because you experience it in real time with Martha for twenty-four minutes.
Constraints fuel creativity. From Hitchcock limited by his ten-minute reels to Schipper, who was only allowed three takes for Victoria, technical constraints have always pushed directors to invent. The long take is never comfortable, and that's what makes it vibrant.
Imperfection is a strength. The blood on the lens in Children of Men, Laia Costa's visible fatigue in Victoria, the awkwardness of the fight in Oldboy—these "flaws" reinforce the feeling of reality. A too-polished long take feels calculated. An imperfect one feels alive.
Technology has pushed the boundaries without changing the essence. This ranking covers a complete technological arc: Welles's film and crane (1958), Kalatozov's handcrafted cables (1964), Scorsese's Steadicam (1990), Sokurov's HD digital (2002), Cuarón's VFX (2013), and Deakins's perfected invisible cuts (2019). Each decade has brought a new tool. But no tool has changed the fundamental principle: not cutting is refusing to let go of the viewer.
The "real" versus "fake" long take debate is a false one. Victoria is a single 138-minute shot. 1917 is an assemblage of four- to eight-minute shots linked by invisible cuts. Gravity is a digital composite. The viewer can't tell the difference, and that's the point. What matters isn't technical purity. It's the feeling of continuity. If you're trapped within the scene's timeframe, the long take has worked. Whether it's "real" or "fake" is only of interest to the technicians.
4. Mistakes to avoid if you try your own
This ranking is also a library of lessons for anyone wanting to create their own long take. Here are the most common pitfalls and what the films on this list teach us to avoid them.
Length for length's sake. A long take doesn't need to be ten minutes to be effective. The Copacabana scene in Goodfellas is three minutes long. Touch of Evil, three minutes and twenty seconds. The length should serve the intention; if you don't have a narrative reason not to cut, then cut.
Technique before emotion. Russian Ark is a monumental logistical feat. But what makes it memorable isn't the 96 uncut minutes, it's the feeling of traveling through time. If the viewer thinks "impressive" instead of feeling something, the long take is a failure.
Aim for perfection on the first try. Oldboy required three days of shooting for a three-minute shot. Victoria was filmed three times in its entirety. Russian Ark required four attempts with only one usable take. Plan for rehearsals; don't expect miracles on the first take.
Neglecting the choreography of the extras. Most of the reshoots at the Copacabana were due to a waiter missing the timing. In a single take, every person on screen is a potential point of failure. The more ambitious the shot, the more rigorous the human choreography must be.
Believing that expensive equipment is necessary. Read the list again: a track and a corridor (Oldboy), a Canon C300 (Victoria), a fixed shot with zero camera movement (Hunger). What's expensive is the preparation, not the equipment.
Pro tip : If you're shooting your first long take, start with a static shot in a confined space, like McQueen in Hunger or Park Chan-wook in Oldboy. Master the timing and choreography before attempting movement. The movement will come later.
5. FAQ
Is the long take reserved for "auteur" cinema?
No. Goodfellas is a mainstream gangster film. 1917 is a big-budget war film. Gravity is a blockbuster. The long take doesn't belong to any genre; it's used wherever a director wants to keep the viewer hooked. Television series are using it too: Adolescence (Netflix), True Detective season 1, and Mr. Robot all employ long takes as narrative tools.
How to spot an invisible continuity error while watching a film?
Look for moments when the screen goes completely dark (a passage through a tunnel, behind a pillar, a narrative fade to black) or very rapid pans (whip pans). These are classic cutaway points. In 1917, observe the passages through dark trenches. In Birdman, the theater corridors. Once you know where to look, you can't miss them.
Why do some directors reject traditional editing for entire scenes?
Because editing offers an escape, for both the viewer and the director. Cutting allows the eye to "breathe," to change perspective, to reposition itself. By refusing to cut, the director deprives you of this outlet. This is what creates the tension in Bexhill (you are trapped in the chaos), the intimacy in Victoria (you cannot "escape" the relationship with the characters), and the hypnotic quality in Béla Tarr's films (your mental rhythm eventually aligns with that of the shot).
Does a digital video sequence shot (VFX) "count"?
It's a divisive debate. Purists demand a continuous shot without any special effects. Others believe the effect on the viewer is the deciding factor, and from this perspective, films like Gravity or 1917 work just as well as Victoria. This ranking includes both categories because the goal is the same: to create a sense of continuity. The "how" is a question of means, not legitimacy.
Which film should you start with if you haven't seen any?
Goodfellas (Copacabana) to understand how a single-take shot tells a story without dialogue. Oldboy to see what can be done with a small space and a limited budget. Children of Men (Bexhill) to experience the full power of the technique. These three cover most of the spectrum.
6. Conclusion
Twenty long takes, twenty ways to push the boundaries of the camera. From Orson Welles' crane shot in 1958 to the digital composites of 1917, the long take remains one of the most audacious gestures a director can make. No safety net, no editing to catch up, just the scene, the camera, and the passage of time.
This ranking is not definitive. It cannot be. Every year, a film pushes the boundaries, and that is precisely what makes this art form alive.
If this list has made you want to revisit these scenes or get your camera out, it has served its purpose.
👉 Find detailed analyses of each of these sequence shots on plan-sequences.com with technical sheets, annotated breakdowns and resources for film enthusiasts and creators.
