Film Review: ‘Victoria’ tells its crime tale in one take
The makers of the new German thriller “Victoria” claim to have lensed the film in one long, continuous shot. There is no obvious evidence that they’re prevaricating, but the history of long-take cinema is filled with clever (sometimes barely clever) tricks to obscure cuts; and I’ve been burned before by being too trusting.
In the late ’40s, Alfred Hitchcock — despite being a master of montage — decided to make a feature, “Rope,” with no cutting at all ... or at least as little cutting as was possible with the available technology. That is, 35-milimeter cameras could only hold 10 minutes of film, so Hitchcock hid the transitions at the 10-, 30-, 50-, and 70-minute marks by having the camera pan over a solid black object, where the “scar” wouldn’t be noticed. Since theater projectors only held 20 minutes and reel changes during projection couldn’t be as carefully controlled, he figured there was no reason to even attempt smooth continuations at the 20-, 40-, 60-, and 80-minute marks.
Hitchcock being Hitchcock, the result wasn’t so much a trick as a master class in what can be gained (or lost) by avoiding cuts.
“Rope” only has eight actors and used the same single location as the stage play it was based on. So, assuming the actors were good enough to have performed it on stage, the only other technical complication was the choreographing and execution of camera, sets and actors moving all at once.
Orson Welles’ famous 3 1/2-minute opening shot in the 1958 “Touch of Evil” was even more of a feat, going from close-up to aerial crane shot, following the actors down streets amid numerous extras, and craning over buildings — in the process setting up both plot and milieu. As art, no other long take matches this accomplishment, though it should be noted that both John Farrow (“The Big Clock”) and Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca”) often opened with tracking shots that concisely established the story’s background in a similar manner.
Now imagine taking on a similar challenge ... but with multiple locations and numerous bit players and extras, shot in public places, and going in and out of buildings and rooms ... for two hours.
Welcome to “Victoria.”
Director Sebastian Schipper — who also co-wrote with Olivia Neergaard-Holm and Eike Schulz — admits that “Victoria” required a number of takes but also asserts that the final film is simply one of them, uncut.
The movie starts in a dance club, focusing on Victoria (Laia Costa), a girl around 20 from Madrid, now working at a cafe in Berlin on a three-month work visa. As she leaves the club in the wee hours, so she can open up the cafe for the breakfast trade, she incautiously joins up with four young guys, who, not entirely surprisingly, turn out to be mixed up in some unsavory business.
She gets tentatively romantic with the least unsavory one, Sonne (Frederick Lau), before learning that he is committed to helping one of the others pull off a stickup to eradicate a debt to a genuinely scary big-time criminal. They must rob a woman who is known to be carrying a huge bundle of cash at the entrance to a bank.
Some things go well — well enough that, for a few minutes, the action slows down as they return to the club and dance some more.
But then things go very bad. Sonne insists that Victoria abandon them for her own safety, but she’s stronger willed and goes on the lam with them anyway.
Costa is immensely appealing; slowly but surely she gives us a sense of how Victoria has come to this point — ending up running from the cops with a group of inept hoodlums.
In purely technical terms, “Victoria” is astounding ... and still would be, even if there was some cheating involved. More importantly, it’s involving enough that my attempts to be on the lookout for possible hidden cuts never lasted more than a minute or two. The two dance club scenes have a blurred, drunken look that might obscure cheats, but, still, I didn’t perceive any.
Those two scenes are also the only ones that felt overlong, though, to be fair, that may be a result of how awful the music is.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).