138 days til Oscar: That's your Best Picture length!
Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at 9:31AM 138 is a magic number. It's the average length, in minutes, of a Best Picture winner. Here are the running times of all winnners from longest to shortest. You'll see that the majority of winners are over 2 hours long which has caused no end of padding in "serious" movies but alas, not enough padding for tender buttocks watching the interminable movies.
Here are your Best Picture winners from longest film to the shortest.
- Gone With the Wind (1939) 238 minutes
Just two minutes shy of four hours, but worth every second. Lots of Gone With the Wind discussion here. Did you see its recent two day theatrical screening? - Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 216 minutes
- Ben-Hur (1959) 212 minutes
Currently in the process of being remade because that's how Hollywood do. Although this film was itself a remake so... we'll let it pass. Still there is no way its signature scene, the chariot race, will be as thrilling with CGI.
ˆˆˆ over 3½ hours ˆˆˆ - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 201 minutes
- The Godfather Part 2 (1974) 200 minutes
- Schindler's List (1993) 195 minutes
- Titanic (1997) 194 minutes
- Gandhi (1982) 191 minutes
- The Deer Hunter (1979) 182 minutes
- Dances With Wolves (1990) 181 minutes
ˆˆˆ over 3 hours ˆˆˆ
other long ass movies and how it relates to this year after the jump...
I only ever shouted "Freedom" when the insufferable movie ended! My vote for the worst Best Picture winner in my lifetime.
- Braveheart (1995) 177 minutes
- The Great Ziegfeld (1936) 176 miutes
- The Godfather (1972) 175 minutes
- Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) 175 minutes
- The Sound of Music (1965) 174 minutes
- Patton (1970) 172 minutes
- The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) 172 minutes
- My Fair Lady (1964) 170 minutes
- The Last Emperor (1987) 163 minutes
- The English Patient (1996) 162 minutes
- Out of Africa (1985) 161 minutes
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) 161 minutes
- Amadeus (1984) 160 minutes
- Gladiator (2000) 155 minutes
- Hamlet (1948) 155 minutes
- Oliver! (1968) 153 minutes
- West Side Story (1961) 152 minutes
- The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) 152 minutes
- The Departed (2006) 151 minutes
ˆˆˆ over 2½ hours ˆˆˆ
Wings is long for a non DW Griffith silent. Thank god it's so good! - Wings (1927) 144 minutes
- Forrest Gump (1994) 142 minutes
- All About Eve (1950) 138 minutes
- All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 136 minutes
- A Beautiful Mind (2001) 135 minutes
- 12 Years a Slave (2013) 134 minutes
- Mrs. Miniver (1942) 134 minutes
- Rain Man (1988) 133 minutes
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) 133 minutes
- Terms of Endearment (1983) 132 minutes
- Million Dollar Baby (2004) 132 minutes
- Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) 132 minutes
- Unforgiven (1992) 131 minutes
- The Hurt Locker (2008) 131 minutes
- Rebecca (1940) 130 minutes
- The Sting (1973) 129 minutes
- Tom Jones (1963) 128 minutes
- You Can't Take It With You (1938) 126 minutes
- Going My Way (1944) 126 minutes
- The Apartment (1960) 125 minutes
- Chariots of Fire (1981) 124 minutes
- Ordinary People (1980) 124 minutes
- Shakespeare in Love (1998) 123 minutes
- Cimarron (1931) 123 minutes
- No Country For Old Men (2007) 122 minutes
- American Beauty (1999) 122 minutes
ˆˆˆ over 2 hours ˆˆˆ
Annie Hall = Biggest Ratio of Minutes (93) to Laughs (Hundreds) - Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 120 minutes
- Platoon (1986) 120 minutes
- Argo (20120 120 minutes
- A Man For All Seaons (1966) 120 minutes
- Rocky (1976) 119 minutes
- From Here To Eternity (1953) 118 minutes
- The King's Speech (2010) 118 minutes
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 118 minutes
- How Green Was My Valley (1941) 118 minutes
- Gentleman's Agreement (1947) 118 minutes
- The Life of Emile Zola (1937) 116 minutes
- Gigi (1958) 115 minutes
- Midnight Cowboy (1969) 113 minutes
- Chicago (2002) 113 minutes
- An American in Paris (1951) 113 minutes
- Crash (2005) 112 minutes
- Grand Hotel (1932) 112 minutes
- Cavalcade (1933) 112 minutes
- All The King's Men (1949) 110 minutes
- In the Heat of the Night (1967) 109 minutes
- On the Waterfront (1954) 108 minutes
- Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) 105 minutes
- It Happened One Night (1934) 105 minutes
- The French Connection (1971) 104 minutes
- Casablanca () 102 minutes
- The Lost Weekend (1945) 101 minutes
- The Artist (2011) 100 minutes
- The Broadway Melody (1929) 100 minutes
- Driving Miss Daisy (1989) 99 minutes
- Sunrise (1927) 94 minutes *for the nitpickers: yes, technically this is not a best picture winner but the winner of "Best Unique and Artistic Quality of Production" a category that was only given in Oscar's first year when they were figuring things out and had essentially two different Best Picture categories, the other was called "Outstanding Picture" which Wings won.
- Annie Hall (1977) 93 minutes
ˆˆˆ over 1½ hours ˆˆˆ - Marty (1955) 90 minutes
Fascinating that 90-95 minutes, in my opinion the average perfect length for most motion pictures, is so underrepresented.
"But how does this relate to this year, Nathaniel?" Well thanks for asking, dear reader. Here are the running times of films that are hoping to be in the running for Best Picture From longest to shortest
INTERSTELLAR - 169 minutes
BOYHOOD -165 minutes
(If either Interstellar or Boyhood wins Best Picture, The English Patient gets bumped from the top 20 longest BP winners list. What would Elaine Benes make of all these 3 hour dramas?)
MR TURNER - 150 minutes
GONE GIRL - 145 minutes
UNBROKEN - 137 minutes
AMERICAN SNIPER - 134 minutes
FOXCATCHER - 130 minutes
INTO THE WOODS - 124 minutes
THEORY OF EVERYTHING - 123 minutes
BIRDMAN - 119 minutes
WILD - 115 minutes
THE IMITATION GAME -113 minutes
WHIPLASH - 106 minutes
GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL - 100 minutes
American Sniper and Unbroken, two late arrivals are the closest to your Best Picture average length. A slight mitigating note: the most common actual specific running time for Best Picture winners is 118 minutes (5 films)... and none of these films pull that off either.
You're welcome math nerds.
Why do you think Oscar likes its movies so long and what's your ideal movie length in a perfect world? (Don't chicken out and answer "depends on the story" I'm talking ideal template to aspire to though some stories would obviously do well to be shorter and others longer - that should go without saying.)
Reader Comments (35)
Ah! Gotta love some over-analysing of Oscar trivia! :)
SUNRISE is no Best Picture winner.
Length is irrelevant if the pace of the movie has no forward momentum. No sense of urgency or importance to the events happening in the smaller scenes.
Driving Miss Daisy is only 99 minutes long?? I've always assumed it's more like three hours or something.
They really like big long epic movies.
I can understand them somehow.
Interstellar is 189 minutes? Oh my...
Voegtlin -- i should have put in the note knowing there'd be nitpickers so i've included it now as to why it's there.
Nathaniel, I like how your brain works. Of the top 10 in length, only The Deer Hunter seemed super-sized in a bad way. During my first viewing years ago, I remember falling asleep during some parts. Also, I think Lawrence of Arabia was a bit long, though the visuals were compelling enough to keep me awake.
Really surprised that one of my favorite films, The French Connection, is only 104 minutes long.
And Boyhood is worth every one of its 165 minutes.
Sonja - you understand Ampas or the epic movie length?
Well, the easy answer your question, Nathaniel, is that, if the movie is long there are better chances it can build the characters better, intertwine stories more harmoniously, communicate its message more strongly, in general be a better film. I think the Academy awards films that constitute A POWERFUL EXPERIENCE, which is more or less what the average moviegoer would appreciate in a film. To make an analogy in everyday life, a powerful experience can be a car crash, which lasts for 3 seconds, or a 2 week vacation in the Bahamas. But then you can talk for hours about the hotel and the beaches and the natives and the food in the Bahamas, but for the accident you can only say that much. So apart from a powerful experience, time ampleness usually provides a DEEP AND FULFILLING experience that affects a person in many ways, even to his core. And that is more likely to happen with a 2 and a half our movie, than with a 90 minute one.
And of course a powerful, deep and fulfilling experience can be of many things, it can be experience of grandure like Ben Hur, experience of fun glamour like Chicago, experience of willpower like Forrest Gump etc. etc.
Personally I have second thoughts when I see running times above 130 minutes, which is kinda my ideal running time if the material is good. The exceptions are not few, for example La Vie d' Adele (179 minutes) I think hadn't even one superfluous second, every moment was adding to its power. As you said, it mostly depends on the story.
@Mark
Both.
I mean an epic wouldn't be "epic" if it wasn't at least two hours long. Or better three.
In most cases I think the Academy just prefers films with huge amount of actors, extras, settings, costumes, big orchestral scores and so on.
Well, if we look at the past they mainly did.
But there are also enough films with less running time that have beaten big epics like Licoln (Argo) or Avatar (The Hurt Locker).
And Boyhood is an intertesting case. It might be epic without all the overdose of technical aspects.
We'll see what wins in the end.
Isn't Interstellar 169 minutes? That's the only number I've read...
ROARK -- oops. I misread it. You're right. Fixing now.
Actual length doesn't matter so much to me as whether the movie FEELS long. For instance, A Man for All Seasons and Cimarron felt really long, even though, comparably, they aren't long Oscar winners.
And, looking at your list, length is no accurate gauge of quality. It's pretty scattershot, I'd say.
Choosing between quality movies, my favorites are generally 2-1/2 hours. If I love something, I want a lot of it. I want to walk out of the theater feeling that I had a full experience, that I really took a journey (physical or emotional) with someone and got to know them fully. I find that longer films usually have more of the arc and more of the epic feel I crave.
If I had to name my five favorite Best Pictures, none of the five are under 2 hours, three are over 2.5 hours, and my absolute favorite happens to be *the* longest Best Picture.
That said, there are an awful lot of overlong pretenders.
Jacob hadn't posted when I started my comment. Basically, I am the general audience member to whom he refers .
I did see GWTW at the movie theater last weekend and it was one of my favorite moviegoing experiences yet. Even if it was at a regular movie theater (i.e. not an arthouse) going to rep films you get this sense that you rarely get going to new releases: that people REALLY want to be there to watch the film. Where usual screenings are filled with talkers, texters, couples making out, seat kickers and loud munchers, everyone at GWTW was so immersed in the movie that the only noises you could hear were our collective laughter, gasping and sobbing at the right parts. Like I always say after watching this movie, it feels like the shortest 4 hours of my life.
There is no experience like seeing a film at a public venue instead of whatever home screen, tv, or laptop you use. Yes, the small screen has made these wonderful movies more accessible. I get that, but as Jose says, there is something to the movie as shared experience............you are thirsty at intermission of Lawrence...........there is that sharp intake of breath in Wait until Dark.
And it is probably what made these "longer" movies so popular . ( I am not going to touch attention span here). The music, the intense color and photography, as Pam and Jacob point out, films are shared and the impact stays far longer when seen in a theater.
I think part of why they go for longer films usually is that many equate length with quality but after sitting through many dogs that go on endlessly it just ain't so.
To me the ideal length is somewhere between 105 and 130 minutes, at least in a film without an intermission. GWTW is fine because it has that built in break where you can digest what you've seen and then continue the story.
I'm with you on Braveheart being one of the worst Best Picture winners, certainly one of the worst recent ones although Chariots of Fire is in the running.
Ben-Hur was a remake but the original was silent so the film makers could bring something new to the material with sound. What could they possibly be going to add this time? Musical numbers? It's got disaster written all over it.
Jose--you are so right! I attended a screening of BOYHOOD at a festival, where every single person (all of whom waited in line for an hour plus) really wanted to be there, were completely engaged in the film, and no one left for snacks, bathroom, etc. (except for a weird domestic disturbance half way through). A magical experience, which I'm sure has totally colored my opinion of the film, and why it didn't seem long.
And think, with intermission these films are even longer!
I saw Gone with the Wind in 35mm on one of the biggest screens I've ever seen. It was one of the best cinema experiences of my life.
I wish I could 'like' Leslie19's post. Extra long films with intermissions give audiences that fleeting moment to gab about what they just saw, what they think is going to happen. What a truly shared experience that is. Other than typing in things in a comment section of a website. ;-)
erik & leslie -- i love intermissions too. They used to always have them if the original picture included them at the revival house where i first fell for old movies in Detroit. It was great to stand up and chat with family/friends and get some more popcorn, whatever. I love the intermissions at the theater too for the same reason.
Nathaniel and Erik,
At the risk of being "outed" for being a certain age, are you old enough to remember those little cartons of orangeade?
I'm generally of the opinion that no movie needs to be 3 hours long (unless it's something like Gone With the Wind ;)). I loved Boyhood, The Wolf of Wall Street, Blue is the Warmest Colour - but I still wish they had been shorter.
Of all the BP Winners I've seen The Last Emperor felt the longest. I feel like I never actually finished watching it (though I did) because it would just never, ever end...
I can't believe Interstellar is so long. I'm tired of it already. Oh, Jessica and Anne, the things I do for you.
I don't like long movies so you just depress me. For me, the ideal length is 95-105. I like to do several things with my afternoon.
Maybe worth noting that, since 1998, the average run-time drops to 131 minutes (and that's substantially inflated by one 201-minute film, The Return of the King -- without it, the average is far more bearable 126).
I don't pick 1998 at random: that was the year the medium-length Shakespeare in Love beat out the close-to-three-hours Saving Private Ryan. It wasn't just a triumph of pleasure over "significance"; it was maybe a rejection of the "bloated running time = great movie" premise that had led to sch awful best picture winners as Braveheart.
There have been plenty of long movies since that at one time seemed like best picture hopefuls -- The Aviator at 170, Benjamin Button at 166, 4 2012 titles (Django, Les Miz, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln) that all topped 2 1/2 hours -- but fell to films with more reasonable run-times.
Which is to say, maybe people predicting the big efforts this year -- Unbroken, Selma -- are dealing with an outmoded model.
Comedies: the run time should not enter the triple digits. You would need to be VERY special for that to work. Very special.
The rest range.
90-100 minutes is for me the perfect length films. I consider many of the deepest movies (Cries & Whispers, Au Hasard Balthazard, or even animated film like Paprika) are in just 1 and a half hour long; (personally I think it's an art to tell a good story in a confined time; longer time would lead to some unnecessary subplots.
Tom Q -- that is heartening but we also shouldn't point to Unbroken or Selma since we don't know they're running times.
This post made me think. I wasn't really aware of it, but I will make choices on which movie I see in the theater (spur of the moment viewing) based on the length of the film. If there are two I am interested in seeing, the shorter will win out. The same with home viewing and at awards time when I suddenly have several films to view, the shorter ones go first so I can make sure I get as many in a possible because you never know when the cat will need an emergency trip to the vet. I'm sure I"m not the only one.
I will say, I think the length of Saving Private Ryan was one of its strengths. The opening act in particular needed to be that long so that we felt the true horror of the event, the inability to extract ourselves from the madness and the terror of having no where to go but forward into deeper danger. The other two acts had to match for balance and to show the true nature of war. Dances with Wolves on the other hand, could have lost half its running time and not been hurt in any way. That one felt like forever to me.
I think you should lobby for those artistic and unique productions to be considered best picture winner/nominees. After all, there were two directing categories that year and all five individuals are considered best director winners/nominees. And a year or two later the category was renamed outstanding production, mixing key words from the original two categories – if my sources are correct. Anyway, maybe they should reintroduce the category and have best 5 popular movies and best 5 artistic movies. Or something. And THEN, that very night there can be a vote for the very best among the winners of those two categories, animated and foreign films, and documentary. That would be exciting! The technique exists. I think. Nothing to do in Chicago.
Whither Nashville?
I saw "Gone with the Wind" last week in the theater with my aunt and I had never seen it straight through. Of course, I greatly enjoyed it -- and I don't think I would have if they HADN'T done the intermission. It was only four minutes, and the people working for the movie theater told us they tried to make it longer, but Fantom Events refused. I think the intermission works because it makes GWTW feel more like a play, with an Act I/Act II structure. This is also because the intermission is at the perfect time in the story (Act I is the Civil War, Act II is Reconstruction), and that can't happen with every film.
I liked "Gone Girl" but I wish I would have read up on how long it was before I saw it. I purposely avoided reading ANYTHING about it because I wanted to be as unspoiled as I could.
I like my movies under 2 hours generally speaking, although I am certain that some of my favourites are likely above that.
How does everyone prepare for a 2+ hour film? Is that where a Haribo party mix comes in handy?