358 Days Until Oscar. Moonlight was short, as Best Pictures go.
Saturday, March 11, 2017 at 10:00AM 
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)
Reader Comments (23)
The only things about 'Braveheart' I actually remember is that I didn't really like it, and that it felt really long. I have forgotten, though, that it not only felt long, but actually was long. Though certainly not quite as long as it felt.
I really don't think there is a perfect length for a film. Some movies work well at 90 minutes but many would feel rushed or underdeveloped.
Nathaniel does the Driving Miss Daisy theme ever creep into your imagination causing unpleasant thoughts? Can I assume that sore spot of a best actress victory is equivalent to when Anjel hears the word misery and is automatically reminded that her one chance in the category is pa pa permanently damaged?
That's funny about Braveheart. My sister saw it for the first time this year, and she couldn't believe it won best picture. She ran through a huge list of the movie's deficiencies. She was even more upset when I told her it beat Apollo 13, Babe, and Sense and Sensibility. She has never seen Il Postino, but she decided it was probably much better than Braveheart, too.
Length doesn't matter to me. Some long movies are worth it. And some under two hours are chores to sit through. Cimarron felt longer than plenty of movies longer than it. The same can be said for Gentleman's Agreement, The Life of Emil Zola, and The King's Speech. Ben-Hur is long, but it moves, so it doesn't feel as long as A Man for All Seasons, which is only two hours.
Jackie -- i'm exaggerating when i say "the perfect length for a movie" but generally speaking i think it's close to it (some movies earn being really long -- best years of our lives / gone with the wind/etcetera but i think the actual majority of super long movies don't).
90 minutes is the length of a dream cycle and if movies are dreams... there's even some interesting discussion on what is risking it with length in one of my all time favorite film books "the conversations" with Walter Murch on editing and sound editing and audience involvement to pov narratives and such.
/3rtful -- thankfully i've only seen it once so, no.
cash -- yeah. one of those years where the absolute worst choice won. thankfully that doesn't seem to be happening as much as it once did.
I had no idea that "The Great Ziegfeld" was so long--not that I've ever seen it.
I like Driving Miss Daisy and it's score. It may not be one of the greatest movies, but I think it's still good. I haven't seen it in years, but I remember having an interesting discussion on race and socio-economic issues with my fellow viewers after it was done.
"i'm exaggerating when i say "the perfect length for a movie" but generally speaking i think it's close to it (some movies earn being really long -- best years of our lives / gone with the wind/etcetera but i think the actual majority of super long movies don't)."
It's true some films would be much better simpler and shorter but I've seen too many 90-100 minutes films that I thought needed to longer to consider it close to the perfect film length.
I don't think the length of a perfect movie can be standardized - 'Duck Soup' is as perfect at 68 minutes as 'Toni Erdmann' is at 162.
I wouldn't even agree that a movie feeling longer than it actually is is necessarily a sign that it is bad - just for example, it will never cease to amaze me how much story 'City of God' can cram into its 130 minute running time without feeling overstuffed, and in retrospect it sometimes feels like it's two or three seasons of a serialized TV show. Also, when I left the cinema after watching 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' for the first time, I was amazed to look at my watch and find out only a mere two hours had elapsed, as the film felt as epic as a three-hour-and-a-bit spectacle.
But indeed, that sweet spot of ninety-something minutes feels just right. If neither the story nor the storyteller can justify exceeding that time, I tend to grow restless, and more often than not, when a film hits the two-hour mark and keeps going, I find myself wishing it would have thrown out needless filler.
Is anyone else still in the "Holy shit, Moonlight won best picture" phase?
I think what staggers me, about movie running times, is that comedies, somehow, are viewed as 2 hr projects which is just INSANE to me. Sure, some comedies can sustain longer running times (Toni Erdmann was mentioned, but Some Like it Hot brushes the 2 hour mark as well)., but take a look at a Lubitsch comedy - his films rarely hit triple digits.
Nathaniel, have you ever done an "average" run time for the movies in your top ten? I'd be curious
arkaan -- ooh i have not but your comment prompted me to look at this year's top ten and the average is 116.8 minutes... shortest being LOVE & FRIENDSHIP and THE WITCH (both 92 minutes) and the longest by far being THE HANDMAIDEN (167 minutes)
Arkaan -- and yes, i'm still in the 'holy shit Moonlight' mode.
You know The Godfather's first cut was under 120 minutes. Producer Robert Evans refused to accept this version and told Coppola: you have a 3-hour epic in your hands. Do it!
So Coppola went back to the editing room and the movie got its extra hour. It's strange to think that, because every single second of The Godfather is perfect.
cal roth: The Godfather as a 2 hour movie would have been trash. The human moments would have been cut down and it would have been all plot and gore. Though, honestly, Robert Evans is one of the best producers in Hollywood history. (High points: Rosemary's Baby, Harold and Maude, The Godfather, Kid Notorious (It didn't last long, but it sounds like it was a proto-Archer. So, that's cool.).)
TANDY4EVA
Volvagia: Not forgetting Chinatown!
complete side note: wasn't Joan Crawford hot in Grand Hotel? Like holy cow!
Arkaan -- Absolutely!
You made a mistake. GIGI is actual 874 minutes. If it weren't for the end credits I'd swear it never actually ended. I refuse to believe it is shorter than SPOTLIGHT, which I could've sworn was about 105 tops.
@Glen Dunks: yes, Gigi was indeed that long--but I think The Great Ziegfeld was perhaps even 1-2 minutes longer.
I can't stand the folksy, cringe-worthy score of "Driving Miss Daisy."
But I do wish "Annie Hall" had a running time of forever, instead of 93 minutes.
It's always good to be reminded that Titanic is the shortest movie to win 11 Oscars.