Clara Bow became the biggest star of the 1920s in just 72 minutes. A year into her contract at Paramount, the 21-year-old actress starred in the 1927 romantic comedy It, about a worldly wise salesgirl seducing her handsome boss.
Critics and audiences loved the film, but were completely enamored with the film’s vivacious young star, whose role in bringing the term “It Girl” into wider public awareness. It made Bow the industry’s biggest box office hit, as well as ushering in the era of the mine, along with the broader freedoms and excesses of the Jazz Age. For a film that’s less than an hour and a half long, that’s quite a cultural impact.
This January saw the launch of Babylon, a period piece of Hollywood glamor set in the decade It. Directed by Damien Chazelle Whiplash, La La Land and The first man, which stars Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy, a fictional silent film star whose life seems to have been heavily inspired by Bow’s. News started going viral this week about early screenings by critics, so I looked up its showtimes. Three hours and eight minutes: a little more than two and a half hours ItS.
Chazelle is a talented filmmaker, and there’s no reason to doubt it Babylon will pass its welcome. (In fact, an early trailer, which shows Robbie and Brad Pitt riding horses in a string of lavish orgies, suggests the problem is excessive extravagance.) But for most of us, such long films cannot be just watched. They have to be scheduled, with the entire evening set up in advance and additional costs like food and babysitting needing to be considered.
While Babylon Possibly the longest-running contender among the potential contenders in the upcoming Oscars and Bafta seasons, it’s not out of the question for many. Todd Field’s psychological drama tar, with Cate Blanchett as the talented conductor, lasted two hours and 41 minutes. Baz Lurhmann’s rock-and-roll biopic Elvis arrived after just two minutes down there; Steven Spielberg’s Sweet Cinematic Memoirs Fabelman’s house only 10. bardoanother memoir drama, this one from birdmanAlejandro González Iñárritu by Alejandro González Iñárritu, ran for three hours and four minutes at its Venice premiere in September — although after being mocked by critics for brain and butt paralysis, Iñárritu returned to the editing room and cut 22 minutes.
Meanwhile in the blockbuster world, Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda forever will cost you two hours and 41 minutes of your life this weekend. And that was just the warm-up for James Cameron Avatar a sequel next month, which is supposed to air in three hours and 10 minutes of Babylonian rumble.
On a film-by-film basis, epic length is not a barrier to success. I’ve heard from distributors that making more movies for money is an attractive commercial prospect, especially for younger audiences with more flexible lives. And that anecdotal claim seems to be backed up by numbers. The average length of the 10 most popular films released in the UK last year was two hours and 13 minutes — an average that has been greatly reduced by the family-friendly 93 minutes of Peter Rabbit 2.
Even so, it’s hard not to feel like the film industry is losing the allure of a movie that does everything it wants to do in 90 minutes seamlessly. This is partly thanks to the current dominance of streaming platforms: feature-length movies work in their favor, as their ratings are measured by minutes watched, not tickets sold. (That basically means that a three-hour movie is worth more than a two-hour movie—as long as its audience sticks with it to the end.) And when Netflix allows, for example, Martin Scorsese joins Irish At 3 hours and 29 minutes, traditional studios feel compelled to match their generosity, lest their favored directors (like Chazelle) abet their digital rivals. their.
But for the cinema, such wind-block-sized entertainment presents its own problems. The longer the film, the fewer shows per day — which means less of the show will have to make way for a broader, more eclectic distribution.
While grappling with a gruesome web of schedules in 2018, Sam Clements, head of marketing at Picturehouse Cinemas, was inspired to start Film Festival 90 minutes or less podcast: a celebration of movies lasting up to an hour and a half. More than 100 episodes later, Clements says it’s clear audiences still love the kind of neat, efficient storytelling that has been left out of the limelight in recent years.
“Today, not only are studio blockbusters taking up so much screen space, but they also dominate the pop culture dialogue,” explains Clements. “So that led to a widespread perception that two hours and 20 minutes is the amount of time a movie should be.”
He points out that even children’s cartoons are more spread out than before: where early Disney classics like Snow White, stupid and Bambi almost 80 minutes long and sometimes even 70 minutes, recent releases like Encanto, Raya and the last dragon and two Frozen they all fall between 100 and 110. But as a kid, when choosing movies from a video rental store, his favorite movies were always within that sacred 90-minute period.
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I’ve always loved the luxurious expanse of a feature-length film, but in too many recent cases you can feel them sweaty chasing their epic position, dragging themselves to the finish line. Wakanda forever there will be fans, but I’d love to see what they can achieve in Wakanda in the top two hours.
© Telegraph Media Group Limited (2022).
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/bring-back-the-90-minute-movie-epic-run-times-have-gone-on-too-long-42152683.html Bringing back the 90-minute movie – the epic run time went on for too long
