It's 1964. No CGI. No drones. No lightweight cameras.

And yet, today, such a shot is still as impossible and very rarely done.

Why is it so impossible? I get that cinema cameras are a bit heavier to handle, but the trickiest part seem to be the hand-offs between walking backwards, pulling the camera up and receiving the camera on the upper floor.

It's a complex shot and there isn't really that big of pay off beyond having done the shot, but it's by no means "impossible", or am I missing something here?

> Why is it so impossible

Because it requires imagination. And then careful planning. And then execution.

In the shot, there is a crowd in the streets, there are people on balconies and in the rooms acting in concert with the camera etc.

These days this is offloaded to overworked underpaid CGI artists at a second production unit.

And the coordination with the huge crowd.

Movie was filmed on lightweight handheld camera.

You surely don't have to be a film buff to appreciate the skill and artistry that went into that shot. I'm not at all a film buff but to me it is a work of art on par with other works of art regardless of medium.