Gone With the Wind is not remotely the longest movie to ever win an Oscar (O.J. Made in America just beat previously record holder in that regard, Russia's foreign film winner War & Peace, by pretending to be a "movie" when it was actually a TV miniseries). But Gone With the Wind remains, at 3 hrs & 58 minutes, the longest Best Picture winner. We published the list of running times of the Best Picture winners a few years back but since then the Academy has naturally added a few movies to this list so it was time to update.
The last three winners have all, thankfully, been comparatively succinct in their storytelling and all of them under the "average" in length for a Best Picture. Can we hope that running times will come back down again since they've been growing over the years? Moonlight, our latest champ, is the 15th shortest film to ever win Best Picture. You can pack a lot of greatness into 111 minutes as we hope future filmmakers will realize when they study Barry Jenkins amazing movie in film schools.
Here are all 90 Best Picture winners from longest to shortest. The new entries in bold...
- 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. - Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 216 minutes
- Ben-Hur (1959) 212 minutes
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
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
ˆˆˆ almost 3 hours ˆˆˆ
- 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
- Spotlight (2015) 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 - 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
- Birdman (2014) 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
- Moonlight (2016) 111 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
It's too bad that 90 minutes, the perfect length for a movie, is so underrepresented!
Annie Hall = Biggest Ratio of Minutes (93) to Laughs (Hundreds)