4) Rope
Long before Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu was pretending to make a ‘single tracking shot’ movie with Birdman, Alfred Hitchcock was pretending to do the same with Rope. Proving he was always a filmmaker ahead of his time, Hitch hides the cuts elegantly in this 1948 anti-murder mystery, in which the audience knows the culprits from the start and it’s left to Jimmy Stewart’s school housemaster to figure it out for himself.
Part of the pleasure of Rope is the technical expertise on display – it was, after all, made in a time when cameras couldn’t hold more than ten minutes-worth of film, meaning Hitchcock by necessity was forced to break his ‘single shot’ down into several takes. More impressive is how Hitchcock holds your attention despite never leaving the apartment setting, where the body of the victim of two murderous students hides from a group of unsuspecting guests.