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The Independent (13/Aug/2010) - A cinema of space oddities

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A cinema of space oddities

Great movies don't need to span the globe. Kaleem Aftab looks at how films from Rear Window to the new Sundance hit Buried have taken inspiration from the limitations of one location

Remarkably, a coffin is the only location in Buried. Ryan Reynolds plays a contractor in Iraq who has been kidnapped and buried alive with only a cell phone at his side, which he uses to communicate with the outside world as he tries to raise a $5m ransom before he dies underground. Rodrigo Cortes' Sundance hit is the ultimate one-location movie: a box big enough to hold one man is where all the action takes place.

The one-location drama is usually seen as the preserve of theatre. The advantage that cinema has over the stage is that the action can be cut: scenes and adventures can take place in numerous locations, just like in real life, without the need for cumbersome scene changes. It's often thought that movie directors use single locations because of budgetary constraints. One thing that handbooks for low-budget film-makers always agree on is the need to keep locations to a minimum, as it reduces costs and makes it easier for the director to control the set.

Yet there are many other reasons to make one-location films: it encourages strong characterisation; an extra emphasis is placed on the acting; the plot needs to be well paced to hold interest; and the action usually takes place over a short amount of time for the film to feel realistic. These reasons are partly why Alfred Hitchcock made four such films, Rear Window, Lifeboat, Rope and Dial M for Murder.

Movies thought of as one-location films will predominantly take place in that location, establishing shots or brief introductions not withstanding. For example, Clerks, which takes place in a convenience store, can be considered a one-location film even though a couple of incidental scenes take place away from the shop. In contrast, Reservoir Dogs is excluded from the genre because Quentin Tarantino built in flashbacks that show scenes outside of the warehouse meeting point. Dog Day Afternoon's airport-set finale makes it another borderline case, but usually the single location will have to be an indoor one to be considered.

What's noticeable when looking at these films is that certain locations, such as a courthouse or haunted house, are frequently used.

'Buried' opens on 1 October

Buried (Rodrigo Cortes, 2010)

The ultimate one-location film sees Ryan Reynolds stuck in a coffin for an hour and a half, trying to phone friends and get the US government to help locate him. Although we hear voices from the outside world, the camera never moves away from Reynolds.

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)

Hitchcock, the master of the one- location movie, tried to make it look like he had shot this drama in one long take. The film, adapted from a play by Patrick Hamilton, sees two impressionable college students try to commit the perfect murder and then hide the body in a trunk in their apartment before inviting the victim's friends and family over for dinner.

Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

Made in the same year that he made Dial M for Murder, another film that mostly takes place in a single domestic location, Rear Window is one of the few single-location films that take place over an extended period of time. In one of the all-time-great thrillers, James Stewart plays a photographer who has broken his leg and, to pass the time, starts spying on his neighbours. He becomes convinced that one of his neighbours has murdered his wife and then calls on several friends, including his girlfriend (Grace Kelly), to help prove this theory.

The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)

John Hughes got the idea to write a movie that takes place in a single location after watching the Australian drama Breaker Morant (1980), in which nearly all the action takes place in a courtroom. Here, the single location is an otherwise empty high school in which five students have been given Saturday detention.

Vanya on 42nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994)

The filming of stage plays is one way of making a one-location film, although usually they are done for the sake of posterity rather than to gain a cinematic release. Vanya on 42nd Street is shot in New York's Amsterdam Theatre (abandoned at the time). It was the result of a long collaboration between the theatre director Andre Gregory and a group of actors who would meet on most Saturdays in an attempt to get to grips with the Chekhov play Uncle Vanya through performance workshops. Eventually, it was decided to show the work to an invited audience with the actors performing in their street clothes. This film is a record of that performance.

Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)

All of the action takes place at court, most of it in a small jury room in which Henry Fonda's juror 8, an architect, stands alone in wanting more time to decide whether or not a boy should be convicted of murdering his father. Twelve Angry Men was adapted from a stage play, a common source for one-location films. The scenes not set in the jury room are in court, in a washroom and on the court steps.

Clerks (Kevin Smith, 1994)

In Kevin Smith's quintessential low-budget film, the action takes place at the store that Smith was working in at the time. Smith was allowed to film at the Quick Stop at night when the store was not conducting its usual business. The story revolves around Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) bemoaning the fact that he has to work there on his day off.

Russian Ark (Alexander Sokurov, 2002)

Aided by Tilman Buttner, his director of photography, Sokurov managed to shoot a whole film in one take. The camera doubles as an unseen character, the film's narrator, who implies that he is a ghost drifting through the Saint Petersburg museum and encountering people from various eras. Different rooms double as different periods of Russian history.

Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)

The Danish director Lars von Trier refuses to fly, so when he wanted to shoot a movie set in America he came up with the ingenious idea of setting the movie on a soundstage with minimal scenery. Buildings are represented by chalk outlines drawn on the floor. The locations, right down to the gooseberry bushes, are labelled to help the audience know where they are at any given time. The film is set in the 1930s, and tells how Grace Mulligan (Nicole Kidman) hides from mobsters in the small town of Dogville.

House on Haunted Hill (William Castle, 1959)

The preamble shows five guests arriving behind a hearse to a "haunted house" party. The host is an eccentric millionaire, who tells his guests that anyone who stays the night will be awarded $10,000. That's when the fun begins. Horror films have a penchant for making the most out of one location, as highlighted in recent years by [Rec] and Hard Candy.

Last Days (Gus van Sant, 2005)

There are a series of films that at first glance sound like they shouldn't be considered part of the genre as they take place outside and the location seems too big. But it's the claustrophobia, and the sense that the protagonists cannot escape, that enable them to sneak into this genre: such films include Lord of the Flies and to a lesser extent Gus van Sant's Last Days, a fictionalised account of the last days of Kurt Cobain that takes place in a house and its surrounding woods.

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