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While I guess it isn't a big secret that Alfred Hitchcock has always been a huge inspiration for Brian De Palma, one possible connection between both of them has only occurred to me recently. The introduction of De Palma's Snake Eyes is famous for being shot continuously without any visible cuts. Another movie that famously exhibits this property is Hitchcock's Rope (as also discussed in this question). Add to this that the story of Snake Eyes unfolds in real-time, which is more or less the case for Rope, too.

Now is there any information (or at least further indication from the respective movies) if the introduction of Snake Eyes is a direct reference to Rope or am I just making things up here?

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  • Nope you're not making things up atleast this guy thinks so deseretnews.com/article/700002065/Snake-Eyes.html?pg=all
    – Dredd
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 22:34
  • I haven't seen the movie, let me see if i could dig around something else.
    – Dredd
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 22:35
  • The biggest movie reference in snake eyes is the 1950 Japanese movie Rashomon by Kurosawa. Everyone has a story to tell and none are the complete truth. De palma does an excellent job of extending the technique with the pov camera. He also does a excellent job when break with it to give us a plot twist that needs no dialogue
    – Sparkytx
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 0:54

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Well, Brian De Palma is a known fan of Alfred Hitchcock (1) (2).

In this interview he explains:

We didn't set out to do a "Brian De Palma Signature SteadiCam Shot".

I wanted to show the whole universe that the Nick Cage character was in. I wanted to show HIS world, I wanted to show it really fast, and I wanted to show it whole, in an exciting venue: with that particular fight night, and the money stuff before the fight and the murder during the fight and the aftermath of the fight AND of the murder, he has a lot of problems to solve, and they're all tied up, in a way.

[...]

I wanted the movie to start with a long, incredibly long shot. I wanted it to start on the boardwalk and end on the boardwalk. With a very long shot.

[...]

It's actually four SteadiCam shots. They don't make twenty-minute camera magazines, so we had to use four or five of them. Basically it's like three or four five-minute shots.

You're not supposed to see the seams, but they're there. The cut is there. I faked it the same way Hitchcock faked his real-time no-cuts thing in "Rope".

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  • P.S.: As Brian De Palma mentions in the interview, his Bonfire of the Vanities also starts with a long shot.
    – Oliver_C
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 23:19
  • My favorite example of stealing from other movies, The Player, is also a likely influence as it sets up the protagonist's whole world.
    – Meat Trademark
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 0:30
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    Thanks for the answer. So I guess what we're supposed to take from it is that (1) While it wasn't done as a direct reference to Rope on purpose, the way it was achieved was probably directly influenced by it and (2) that long continuous takes are a common technique employed by De Palma (even if maybe not always as extensively as in this scene).
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 0:37

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