'Children of Men', the new Alfonso Cuaron sci-fi flick

"Cuarón was inspired by the 20th-century film theorist André Bazin, for whom fast editing diminishes a scene “from something real into something imaginary”."

Like this...doesn't sound right? Bazin was writing (and died) before the really long takes became a thing later in the 60s and then 70s Euro film? And he was more for backing a kind of realism in filmmaking (from my fuzzy memory).

― xyzzzz__, Monday, August 3, 2020 6:05 AM (two years ago)

yeah, my fuzzy memory aligns with yours ... it would probably be more accurate to say that Cuaron was inspired by 60s/70s filmmakers whose long takes were partially a response to the theories of Bazin (e.g. the Godard traffic jam scene in Weekend)

Bazin did celebrate long takes, but he was probably thinking about "master shots" rather than the sometimes showy takes of later filmmakers. It wasn't the length of the take or the impressive camera movements that was important to him:

I would even say that Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope could just as easily have been edited in classical fashion, whatever artistic importance one may legitimately attach to his approach. On the other hand, it would be unthinkable for the famous seal-hunting scene in Nanook of the North not to show us, in the same composition, the hunter, the hole in the ice and the seal.

All the news about Manston has had me thinking about the Bexhill scenes in CoM over the last few days.

Yup

Saw this for the first time last night. I'm afraid, when everyone stops fighting as he carries the baby out of the building, I was unable to get this bit from The Day Today "War" out of my head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRjtVdWvNzY