About twenty-two minutes into Scarecrow (1973; Jerry Schatzberg\Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC), there’s a scene at a lunch counter between stars Al Pacino and Gene Hackman. It lasts for seven minutes and fifty seconds and features only two brief cuts, the first of which occurs nearly six minutes in. The shot is framed in 2:39 aspect ratio and composed in a medium raking-two that favors Hackman. The camera makes a short dolly move at the start, then remains still for the duration. There’s no matching angle to Pacino and the solitary close-up is brief and seems arbitrary, as if it were engineered after-the-fact so as to adjust performance or timing. The dialogue is banal, though it does push the story forward.
The interesting thing is that at no point during the proceedings are you bored, distracted or wondering when things are going to speed up. In a time when a shot lasting longer than two seconds is often thought of as a drag on the narrative, the clip shows one of the strongest examples of how effective the opposite approach can be.
Granted, a long, static take – like any technique used for the sake of itself – is meaningless unless presented in the right context. Without good writing and actors who can command the screen, you’ll end up with what so many less thoughtful filmmakers have – a pile of junk that insults the viewer instead of entertaining them.
Hunt this movie down and have a look at what smart, talented people can do with good material. There’s more meaningful, creative energy in this scene from Scarecrow than there is in almost all of the jumpy, jangly work we see in theaters and on television today.