The following passage comes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s book “Sculpting in Time”, from Chapter 5: The film Image, in the section titled: Time, rhythm and editing.

The dominant, all-powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame. The actual passage of time is also made clear in the characters’ behavior, the visual treatment and the sound—but these are all accompanying features, the absence of which, theoretically, would in no way affect the existence of the film. One cannot conceive of a cinematic work with no sense of time passing through the shot, but one can easily imagine a film with no actors, music, decor or even editing. (p. 113)

Tarkovsky goes on to describe Pascal Aubier’s fascinating 1974 short film Le Dormeur, in which there is only the camera moving through a landscape until it “discovers” a man who appears to be sleeping in a field but is actually dead.

Here is a link to the film: Le Dormeur* Note: Since the audio is entirely of natural sounds, it is better to turn up the volume to get the full effect.

I love these kinds of films. The camera work, especially for that time, is wonderful. We are so used these days with cameras moving all over the place. But in 1975 this had to have been done on tracks and dollies with a crane. (The Steadicam was invented in 1975 and was not widely available for some time after that.) The moment in the shot where the camera ascends up the dead tree is amazing.

* film found here.