On top of my mind:
- The extended shot in the middle of Hunger (I haven't watched the following video but it seems to be talking about that shot and other static shots in McQueen's filmmography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYY0tsv2ioY)
- Many shots in most of Frederick Wiseman's documentaries
- That one scene in Haneke's Cach?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aolQ1J4xAZ4- That one scene in Ida
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7elB8NGZjg- Most violent scenes in Une Vie Violente by Thierry De Peretti
- Anything Roy Andersson, which, unarguably, always has some kind of theater play feel BUT I would never go see anything like this on stage and I find it particularly powerful on screen. That one scene is a masterpiece, I could very well be sitting at the same place as the camera in a theater watchign it play live on stage and I would not have the same experience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX87rVZ0Vag- Back to documentaries and the birth of cinema(tograph):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_eZuOTBNc isn't this pure cinema? Where the artist is seemingly erased from the equation and where the camera is just capturing reality.
- There is a scene in Godard's Weekend (which isn't a good movie) where 2 people make a big political monologue each. The way it's shot is: the camera stays still, in close up, on the one who isn't talking. It lasts for a few minutes. What a terrific cinematic idea it is.
- A scene that doesn't exist: 1917 wasn't a great war movie. Now wouldn't you want to watch a WW1 movie shot in one extended shot where the camera stays still in a trench, and we see soldiers waiting for 90min before the assault, and the camera stays there until only a few of them come back from the assault? Wouldn't that be a better film?
(The fact that the extended static shots work so well with violence tells me
a case could be made about how unethical/bullshit any other choice can be when what you're filming something that matters.)
Now I highly suggest you give a shot to Las hijas de Abril by Michel Franco (or anything by Franco from what I understand but that's the only one I have seen) and you will see a movie where:
- most of the scenes are told in a single extended shot
- most of those shots don't move (some do, and they're even better when they do, it opens up the shot, it densifies it, so I'm not arguing for "never move the camera"... but the best shots of the movie always start still and then move after at least a minute, and it's more of a pan that creates another shot, so it's more of 2 or 3 shots stiched together by clever mise en scene)
- about a quarter of the shots would deserve to be on a "best shot of the year/decade" list
- you can actually remember most of the shots the day after seeing the movie
By the way, I know where you're coming from and I'm 100% sure you're very wrong about the way you're rejecting the other school of filmmaking. It's one thing to show how camera moves are powerful, fascinating, a huge strength of that medium, it's another one to close one's mind/eyes to so many greatness, powerfulness and intelligence at the other end of the spectrum. Same thing about the editing: of course it's easy to show how amazing and pureley cinematic editing can be. Yet we all know that when we're watching a good extended shot (i'm talking about an extended shot where you can see the DoP masturbating), we're watching something that has to do with the essence of cinema. I'm just trying to make you open your second eye, not close your first.
