IN 1948 in Rope, Alfred Hitchcock made cinema history with the ten-minute take, a short-lived technique which made the claustrophobic action, set in one room in a New York skyscraper, cinematically continuous.

With celluloid working like breathing, this was a dizzying oxygen rush but not everyone was impressed. One critic, by the name of George Perry, opined: "It was a limiting use of the medium, and parts of the film are unbearably tedious."

Why this preamble to reviewing Russian Ark? The answer is that Russian director Alexander Sokurov has moved beyond those Hitch hitches to make the first movie in one seamless, continuous take, and while parts of his film are unbearably tedious too, nevertheless Russian Ark is an audacious, technical tour de force.

Employing High Definition digital technology and a cast of thousands, the 96-minute film flows in a single, unbroken tracking shot at a deliberately stately pace: any faster and it would induce motion sickness.

Russian Ark unfolds like a guided-tour dream, a pillow ride through Russian history in the lavish setting of the Hermitage, once the Winter Palace of the Tsars, in St Petersburg. Whereas Hitchcock confined Rope to one room, Sokurov moves from room to room, his camera pursuing a strange, frankly irritating, intrusive fellow with Harpo Marx hair, still dazed after awaking from an accident.

Look beyond him, and the 19th century pageantry and revelry, the rousing music and fluid movement is breathtaking.

Updated: 09:35 Friday, May 23, 2003