Actor Maria Schneider’s death yesterday brought to mind a film she starred in with Jack Nicholson in 1975: Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger. Like all of Antonioni’s films, The Passenger uses space, emptiness and architecture to create a sense of spiritual longing in an existential void. The film’s final scene is considered to be one of the great cinematic achievements in the history of the medium—a seamless tracking shot that moves through a gated window enters a courtyard and does a 180 pan and returns to the window from the opposite point of view from which it left, no edits.  It was quite some time after the film was released that the method in which it was done became known to film buffs who had been baffled by Antonioni’s seemingly impossible feat. The definitive description of the seven minute long scene is this Wikipedia entry:

There were a number of reasons why the shot proved so difficult to accomplish and is so studied by film students. The shot needed to be taken in the evening towards dusk to minimize the light difference between interior and exterior. Since the shot was continuous, it was not possible to adjust the lens aperture at the moment when the camera passed from the room to the square. As such, the scene could only be shot between 5:00 and 7:30 in the evening.

Difficulties were further compounded by atmospheric conditions. The weather in Spain was windy and dusty. For the shot to work, the atmosphere needed to be still to ensure that the movement of the camera would be smooth. Antonioni tried to encase the camera in a sphere to lessen the impact of the wind, but then it couldn’t get through the window.

Then there were further technical problems. The camera ran on a ceiling track in the hotel room, and when it emerged outside the window it was picked up by a hook suspended on a giant crane that was nearly thirty metres high. A system of gyroscopes had to be fitted to the camera to mask the change from a smooth track to the less smooth and more mobile crane. The bars on the outside of the window were fitted on hinges. As the camera came up to the bars they were swung away at the same time as the hook of the crane attached itself to the camera as it left the tracks. The whole operation was co-ordinated by Antonioni from a van by means of monitors and microphones to assistants who, in turn, communicated his instructions to the actors and the operators.

In the DVD commentary, Nicholson states that Antonioni constructed the entire hotel entirely so that the final shot could be accomplished.

Here’s the scene. Watch it closely and be prepared to amazed. It was shot by Luciano Tovoli. The clip begins with a little bit of visual “noise” that is not part of the original film.