Through the bars?

The bars were opened and then closed during the shot, I believe.

WYSIWYG. Here's a description of the take from Sam Rohdie's book, "Antonioni."

The shot sequence is seven minutes long and took eleven days to set up and complete. The shot -- this is a bare description -- begins as a track from inside the hotel room towards the window facing the square at the Hotel de la Gloria where Locke/Robertson is lying
on the bed. The shot moves to the bars on the exterior side of the window, seems to pass through the bars, and then pans 180 degrees around the square until it returns to the window looking inside from the outside through the bars at Locke/Robertson, now dead, murdered, during the time the camera accomplished its itinerary around the square.

There were a number of reasons why the shot proved so difficult and took so much time to accomplish. Light was a factor. The shot needed to be taken in the evening towards dusk to minimise 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. The problem of time of day -- the scene could only be shot between 5.00 and 7.30 in the evening -- was compounded by atmospheric conditions: the weather was unsettled, windy, nearly cyclonic. 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.There were further technical problems. The camera ran on a ceiling track in the hotel room; when it emerged outside the window it was picked up by a hook suspended on a giant crane, 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 carnera 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. As things turned out the camera could only take a spool of 120 metres which was insufficient for the length of the shot; the camera needed to be modified and the gyroscopes readjusted for a larger 300 metre spool.

THIS MAY BE A SPOILER SO HEADS UP!


Jack Nicholson's commentary on the DVD is not as illuminating as I hoped it would be. However, he does not give away a major plot point, although I'm sure he was tempted. But he does add another piece to the puzzle of how the final shot was accomplished.

Stop now if you don't want to know.









Nicholson explains that the hotel, which looks for all the world like a real location in the middle of the Andalusian mountains, was actually built to scale for the film. It was built in two parts, both of which were mounted on cranes, so the building could be gently eased into two halves (the seam ran vertically through the window) and then be put back together smoothly. This allowed for the camera to seemingly (and seamlessly) pass through the window bars.

I thought perhaps that as with Fred Astaire's famous dance on the ceiling scene in Royal Wedding, things like pictures on the walls, objects on tables, etc. had to be tacked down to keep them from moving. But then again, the cranes moved very slowly, and throughout this 7-minute shot the POV is almost always from inside the room.

I love what Nicholson says about the film at the end: "beautifully hypnotic."