Sequence shot Nostalghia (1983) - The crossing of the candle at Bagno Vignoni
Title : Nostalghia (Ностальгия)
Year : 1983
Director : Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenplay : Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra
Photography : Giuseppe Lanci
Set design : Andrea Crisanti
Editing : Amedeo Salfa and Erminia Marani
Sound : Remo Ugolinelli
Music : Beethoven, Verdi (Requiem), Debussy, Wagner, Russian folk song "Kumushki"
Principal performers : Oleg Yankovsky (Andrei Gorchakov), Erland Josephson (Domenico), Domiziana Giordano (Eugenia)
Film duration : 125 minutes
Shot duration : approximately 9 minutes (one take, no cuts)
Format : 35mm, 1.66:1, Technicolor
Type of movement : lateral tracking shot in profile, slow panning that follows the actor
Device : camera on rails installed at the bottom of the drained swimming pool
Preparation time : 3 days for track installation by Italian technicians, 3 days of rehearsal with the technical team (without the actor), filming on the 4th day
Number of takes : only one ("we've only got one take" according to Tarkovsky to Yankovsky, successful on the first try)
Filming location : thermal bath of Sainte-Catherine in Bagno Vignoni (Val d'Orcia, Tuscany), swimming pool drained for the occasion
Production companies : RAI Rete 2, Opera Film
Film awards : Ecumenical Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival
Main sources : testimony of Oleg Yankovsky collected by Sergei Solovyov, documentary Andrei Tarkovsky in Nostalghia, Nostalghia.com, Filmmaker Magazine, Fandor Keyframe
A man in a raincoat steps into an empty swimming pool. The light is dim, the air heavy with Tuscan mist, the walls of the Baths of St. Catherine in Bagno Vignoni ooze with ancient limestone. Andrei Gorchakov, an exiled Russian poet, holds a lit candle. He has made a promise to the madman Domenico to cross the pool from one side to the other without letting the flame die, to save the world. There is no one to watch him. No music. Nothing but a breath of wind. He takes a few steps, protects the wick with his palm. The flame dies. He starts again from the beginning, relights the candle, and begins anew. Three crossings, the bottom of the pool traversed in both directions, and the camera refuses to cut. You didn't know a man carrying a candle could take your breath away for nine minutes
Why this scene is iconic
Perhaps the greatest gamble of the long take is filming something that, on paper, has no interest whatsoever. A man walks, the flame goes out, he starts again. No dramatic events. No dialogue. No one to applaud on screen when he reaches the end. The scene serves no purpose for the plot; it is the plot
Tarkovsky explicitly explained his intention to Oleg Yankovsky during their first meeting in Rome, on the terrace of a café in the Piazza di Spagna. The actor's account, published in Sergei Solovyov's book and available on Nostalghia.com, quotes the filmmaker precisely: "display an entire human life in one shot, without any editing, from beginning to end, from birth to the very moment of death." Editing would have destroyed everything. A single cut, and the scene becomes an illustrated metaphor. Without a cut, it is the metaphor. The viewer doesn't watch a man carrying a candle: he carries the candle with him, minute after minute, feeling the weariness rising in his own legs.
How they filmed it
Tarkovsky had the thermal pool at Bagno Vignoni drained for filming. The pool, fed by hot springs since Roman times, emitted foul-smelling calcareous bubbles once dry. The filmmaker insisted on filming in this authentic muddy pool, refusing any studio recreation
For three days, Italian workers laid rails along the entire length of the bath under the director's instructions. The camera was to follow Yankovsky in a lateral tracking shot, at eye level, at his exact speed. During these three days, Tarkovsky rehearsed the panoramic shot with his technical crew without his actor, who wandered around the edge of the pool uncalled. On the fourth day, he was dressed, made up, and helped to jump into the dry pool. Tarkovsky showed him the three points on the rails: the spot where the candle goes out the first time, the spot where it goes out the second time, and the end where Gorchakov finally reaches it before collapsing
The instruction was brutal. Yankovsky recounts the filmmaker's exact words: "We've only got one take." No rehearsal with the actor, no second chances. Tarkovsky wanted Yankovsky's fatigue to reflect that of the character, the precariousness of the flame to reflect the filming process itself. No trickery was allowed: the candle had to go out for real, relight for real, and the actor had to hold out until the end.
Yankovsky's account vividly describes the experience: "I heard the command 'Shoot!' as if through water." He walked, protected the flame, failed twice, succeeded on the third attempt, placed the candle at the edge, and slid to the ground to die. The candle was still burning. Applause erupted from all sides of the set. One take, on the first try.
The visual approach is radically understated. Cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci, marking his first major collaboration with Tarkovsky, employs a rigorous lateral tracking shot, without zooms, cuts, or music. The camera moves at the actor's exact speed and slows down with him. No seamless transitions, no composites: it is a continuous shot from the first to the last frame. This complete absence of artifice makes the scene so difficult to describe; it rejects any demonstrative virtuosity. It is the absolute opposite of the bravura long take à la De Palma or Cuarón
Yankovsky later recounted hearing applause in Cannes, Moscow, Tokyo, and Venice, but that none of it mattered anymore. The important thing, he said, had happened that day, at the bottom of the pool
What to observe when reviewing it
Around the two-minute mark of the shot, when the flame first goes out, Yankovsky doesn't feign disappointment: his face remains focused, almost neutral. Tarkovsky wanted the audience to feel the physical exertion, not the dramatic emotion. It's the camera that weeps in his place, refusing to cut.
During the third crossing, observe the actor's left hand closing around the shell-shaped flame: it's the same gesture he made earlier in the film, holding the open end of Domenico's coat during their first encounter. Tarkovsky had choreographed this gestural echo dozens of minutes apart.
At the very end of the shot, when Gorchakov sets down the candle and collapses, the camera doesn't follow the fall. It remains on the flame alone, which continues to burn for a few seconds. This is the true final gesture of the shot: the flame survives the one who held it.
Did you know?
A plan for a lifetime : Tarkovsky formulated his ambition in the documentary Andrei Tarkovsky in Nostalghia : "We'll have to shoot in one take a scene where you carry a candle, which is a metaphor for what I'm trying to do in my cinema and maybe in my life too." Nostalghia has only 123 shots in its 125-minute runtime, averaging about one minute per shot. The candle scene alone accounts for 7% of the film's duration.
The swimming pool had been closed since filming : the thermal baths of Bagno Vignoni, dedicated to Saint Catherine of Siena who is said to have taken the waters there in the 14th century, had been drained at the production's request. It was Federico Fellini who reportedly recommended the location to Tarkovsky, describing it as a place where locals would sit with their feet in the warm water and chat.
A spiritual sister in Béla Tarr's work : five years before Nostalghia, Tarkovsky had seen in emerging Hungarian cinema a similar way of sculpting time. Twenty years later, Béla Tarr would create, with Werckmeister Harmonies, an eight-minute hospital rampage sequence shot that extends this lineage of contemplative, music-free shots, where the silent effort of a body becomes the entire narrative.
The legacy of Gus Van Sant : Gus Van Sant's death trilogy (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days) is explicitly constructed around long takes of walking, a self-proclaimed homage to Béla Tarr, himself often compared to Tarkovsky. The candle in Nostalghia is the starting point of this tradition: filming a body moving forward, without cuts, without music, without dramatic structure, letting space and time do all the work.
The final prize, the definitive exile : Nostalghia won the Ecumenical Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. Soviet authorities reportedly actively pressured the jury to prevent the Palme d'Or. Hurt, Tarkovsky decided never to return to the USSR. He would only direct one more film, The Sacrifice (1986), before dying of cancer in Paris in December 1986, at the age of 54. The candle was truly his life.
A film clip enshrined in a video game : in 2016, Jonathan Blow's game The Witness incorporated an excerpt from Nostalghia as a cultural fragment to be discovered in the world. The candle scene is among the most frequently cited film clips by creators of contemplative video games.
Sources
Oleg Yankovsky, How we shot the 'Inextinguishable Candle' episode for Nostalghia, extract from the book by Sergei Solovyov Assa, and other compositions by the author, republished on Nostalghia.com
Documentary Andrei Tarkovsky in Nostalghia
Kevin B. Lee, Andrei Tarkovsky's Cinematic Candles, video essay for Fandor Keyframe, March 2014
Scott Macaulay, Tarkovsky's Nostalghia as a Cinematic Candle, Filmmaker Magazine, March 24, 2014
Michael Wood, At the Movies: Nostalghia, London Review of Books, July 14, 2016
Cinema Sentries, Nostalghia 4K UHD Review, Kino Lorber restoration 2022, with audio commentary by Daniel Bird and interview with Giuseppe Lanci
Nostalghia, Wikipedia (technical details and filming locations)
Larsen On Film, review of the re-release of Nostalghia (Giuseppe Lanci)
Read also
The Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) - The ransacking of the hospital : Béla Tarr and the same contemplative lineage as Tarkovsky, eight minutes of silent walking through a hospital corridor.
Elephant (2003) sequence shot : Gus Van Sant, direct heir of Tarr and Tarkovsky, uses walking as a filmic substance, without music or dramatization.
Why the duration of a sequence shot changes everything : an in-depth article on what duration does to the viewer's brain, with a clear distinction between the contemplative sequence shot à la Tarkovsky and the virtuoso sequence shot à la Chazelle.
What is a sequence shot?: the definition of the sequence shot, with the distinction between continuous shot and false sequence shot by invisible cuts, useful to understand why the candle scene belongs to the purest category of the device.
