Okay, so the camera isn't on a crane, but it's much harder to keep a small dialogue scene interesting than an action sequence like the opening. This shot is incredible.
Orson Welles' framing and composition is beyond anything I've seen in movies. It's like he has the perfect shot and it encompasses every detail the audience needs without giving them too much.
This was the first scene Welles shot. Thanks for pointing out that though it is less showy than the opening, it is vastly more intricate and technically accomplished.
At first watching the lack of cutting is unnoticeable because the camera moves from one character to another repeatedly and changes every situations with new one smoothly.
My favorite is Chimes at Midnight, with his youngest daughter, eight year old Beatrice in the role of a male page! She is also the executrix of his estate!
No torches here. Other than the modern take that Heston was goofy-looking as a Mexican, the movie is brilliant, and in my opinion, more tightly plotted than CK.
there are actually anothor long shot after this , also a scene inside the house, also 5 minutes long uncut, so there totally three long shots in the movie
As I watched it for the first time, I couldn't help hearing the film as an Orson Welles radio play. I'm referring to the sound of the dialogues, the way the characters would run into each other verbally. Watch it again, close your eyes and see if you agree. A case could be made that, perhaps, Welles had originally written a draft of this with radio as his intended medium.
100% agree and in many interviews Orson does too. Obviously it's also a signature and obviously he was drawing attention to it too. I think Orson had a view on cinema audio that was very deliberately bringing radio to the screen as it had brought him. Cheeky boy Orson ✔️
Supposedly this was the inspiration for Jabba the Hutt (who in the originally filmed scenes for Star Wars was a fat gangster in a suit, much like Orson here).
Welles' camera work was perfected in his legendary "Citizen Kane", masterpiece,where he experimented with a variety of camera angles, together with Film Noir lighting, not previously used in films. But the overlapping dialogue can be a bit irritating, since microphones can't process two or more people speaking like the human ears can. Such dialogue often becomes muddy unless the words are very clearly spoken. Welles character, unfortunately sounds like he has a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth at all times.
Yeah..before I knew that Welles was unhappy with his voicing of the character, I was unhappy with it as the one inconsistency of the performance. Sometimes, he's got it, most probably with the last-shot scenes, but elsewhere, it's like he's having trouble remembering which of his voices he should use, not yet having the character's. You can even hear, in this scene, when a short snippet is almost in an english accent.
THIS is the tracking shot Welles was really proud of (as you can see in Bogdanovic's book). The beginning of the movie looks overdone and rather pretentious. On the contrary, this one brings perfect efficiency and dramatic density.
I've watched this film numerous times, and I don't think I had fully appreciated this shot. If it were chopped up it certainly wouldn't have felt as coherent as it does here. I have to honestly say, though, that the lighting was nothing but a distraction for me. Those shadows could ONLY come from very hot lights at waist level or lower, and it was so intrusive that my mind actually asked "where's all that bright LIGHT coming from?"
