What's the average length of a Best Picture?
Thursday, November 11, 2021 at 8:00AM by Nathaniel R
This is Lawrence of Arabia... not Dune
THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN 2021, AND IS NOW UPDATED (FEB 2, 2025) TO INCLUDE THE LAST THREE DAYS OF OSCAR WINNERS AS WE APPROACH THE 97TH ACADEMY AWARDS
It's 136 days until the Oscars and 136 is a golden number. It's the average length, in minutes, of a Best Picture Oscar winner. When we first calculated this number over a decade ago 138 was the average but in the past 10 years or so, running times of actual winners have been shaved a bit. 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 interminable movies.
Here are the running times of all winnners from longest to shortest as well as this year's contenders from longest to shortest...
nearly 4 hours
- Gone With the Wind (1939) 238 minutes
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 216 minutes
- Ben-Hur (1959) 212 minutes
under 3½ hours
TITANIC - 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
- Oppenheimer (2023) 180 minutes
nearly 3 hours
THE SOUND OF MUSIC - 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
under 2½ hours
WINGS - Wings (1927) 144 minutes
- Forrest Gump (1994) 142 minutes
- Everything Everywhere All At Once (2023) 139 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
- Parasite (2019) 132 minutes
- Unforgiven (1992) 131 minutes
- The Hurt Locker (2008) 131 minutes
- Rebecca (1940) 130 minutes
- Green Book (2018) 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
- The Shape of Water (2017) 123 minutes
- No Country For Old Men (2007) 122 minutes
- American Beauty (1999) 122 minutes
- Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 120 minutes
- Platoon (1986) 120 minutes
- Argo (20120 120 minutes
- A Man For All Seaons (1966) 120 minutes
just under 2 hours
MOONLIGHT - 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
- Coda (2021) 111 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
- Nomadland (2020) 107 minutes
- Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) 105 minutes
- It Happened One Night (1934) 105 minutes
- The French Connection (1971) 104 minutes
- Casablanca (1943) 102 minutes
- The Lost Weekend (1945) 101 minutes
1½ hours or slightly more... - The Artist (2011) 100 minutes
- The Broadway Melody (1929) 100 minutes
- Driving Miss Daisy (1989) 99 minutes
Sunrise (1927) 94 minutes *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. But Wings is considered the actual winner in retrospect. They're both great movies! - Annie Hall (1977) 93 minutes
- Marty (1955) 90 minutes
Annoying that 85-95 minutes, the perfect length for most motion pictures, since movies are dreams, is so underrepresented and that there are NO winners under 90 minutes to even things out a bit given that there are three winners approaching four hours in length.
"But how does this relate to this year, Nathaniel?"
Well thanks for asking, dear reader. Here are the running times of twenty-three films that are hoping to factor into this year's Oscar race from longest to shortest
- House of Gucci (157 minutes)
- West Side Story (156 minutes)
- Dune Part One (155 minutes) NOT ALL THAT LONG IN RELATION TO OSCAR HISTORY THOUGH IT'S ONLY THE FIRST HALF OF A MOVIE SO IT WILL BE LONGER THAN LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or GONE WITH THE WIND
- The Last Duel (152 minutes)
under 2½ hours - Don't Look Up (145 minutes) AN INSANE LENGTH FOR A COMEDY!
- In the Heights (143 minutes)
- Nightmare Alley (139 minutes)
- King Richard (138 minutes) CLOSEST TO THE AVERAGE FOR A BEST PICTURE WINNER
- Licorice Pizza (133 minutes)
- The Green Knight (130 minutes)
- A Hero (127 minutes)
- The Power of the Dog (126 minutes)
- Being the Ricardos (125 minutes)
- Cyrano (124 minutes)
- Parallel Mothers (120 minutes)
under 2 hours - tick, tick...Boom! (115 minutes)
- Spencer (111 minutes)
- CODA (111 minutes)
- Mass (110 minutes)
- C'mon C'mon (108 minutes)
- Tragedy of Macbeth (105 minutes)
- Belfast (98 minutes) IF IT WINS IT WILL BE THE THIRD SHORTEST WINNER EVER
- Passing (98 minutes)
Best Picture, Oscar Trivia, running times
Reader Comments (11)
I don't care how long a movie is as long as it meets one of two categories:
1. It's long, but it doesn't feel long.
2. It's long, but it's worth it.
Lawrence of Arabia and Gandhi are both long and you know/feel it, but they're worth it. The Great Ziegfeld is similarly long and you feel it to the point where you're 2+ hours in and you wonder if you can stick it out for the last 35 minutes. It doesn't feel worth it.
Dances with Wolves and Cimarron are both western winners. Cimarron is an hour shorter, but it actually feels longer.
THE ARTIST should have been 15 minutes shorter. THE GODFATHER PART II should have been 15 minutes longer (if you've seen the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray, you know what's missing and you're sad.)
I want to know/ask about Intermissions. Gone With The Wind seems very lengthy except that it was planned to have an intermission and you can almost look at it as a double feature or early "miniseries" type movie.
I know that The Sound of Music has an intermission because I've seen it so many times. I suspect My Fair Lady had one, and maybe West Side Story.
Does anyone know about the rest? To me, a three or four hour movie with a planned intermission is less "punishing" than a three-ish hour movie without one.
12.5. The Lost Daughter (121 minutes)
Amazing to see how few are under 110... if Casablanca, French Connection, and On the Waterfront can pull it off, maybe PTA or GdT could do a little trimming!
1.1. West Side Story: 156 minutes
11.1. Being the Ricardos: 125 minutes
While I don't share Nathaniel's yen against long movies, I do agree that comedies that are over 100 minutes better be masterpieces. It's just hard to sustain comedy (pure comedy, I should state) for that long.
I have nothing against long movies (when they work they really work and length has something to do with that), but looking at this list and remembering how much people complained about The Irishman a few years back, I just can't see us going for 3 hour long movies for Best Picture for a good while.
I have nothing against long movies (when they work they really work and length has something to do with that), but looking at this list and remembering how much people complained about The Irishman a few years back, I just can't see us going for 3 hour long movies for Best Picture for a good while.
Ben-Hur is the longest best Best Picture.
Dan H.--it's hard to believe that The Godfather Part II could be any better, because I think it's perfection. So I'll have to check this version out. Thanks.
@Dave: Lawrence of Arabia has an intermission- or at least it did when I saw it in the theater. I agree it's a great way to watch these super long epics.
I haven't seen it, but I'd suspect Ben-Hur has one. That era was more likely to have them, right?
@ Dave in Hollywood
West Side Story definitely had an intermission in its first run, as did My Fair Lady, Ben-Hur and Oliver!