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Film length has long been debated among cinephiles, filmmakers and the general public.
Last year, an online market research poll with around 2,000 Americans found that 92 minutes was the preferred runtime for a film, while only 15% said films over two hours were acceptable.
The survey results came as commercially successful films now average nearly two and a half hours, compared to just under two hours a few decades ago.
Today, The Atlantic published a feature piece that surveyed twenty film-studies professors with many of them sharing stories of students who struggle to sit through films in class without checking their phones.
It seems several professors have resorted to asking students to watch only portions of films, while a number of these students also couldn’t answer basic questions about the films after watching them.
One story on X had a professor showing students François Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim” (which is just 105 minutes), and more than half the class got a post-screening multiple choice option quiz wrong – saying characters drunk with Ernest Hemingway (who isn’t in the movie) and/or hide with the Nazis (it’s set during WW1).
Of course, plenty of students have found old movies to be slow for many years but these professors have noticed a change in the past decade, and especially since the pandemic. They indicate many students are resisting the idea of in-person screenings altogether.
When students watched films on the campus internal streaming platform, less than 50% started the films and only 20% made it to the end – and these are film students with motivation to watch. Watching at two-times speed or watching while doing other tasks is also widely acceptable.
Several professors have students who’ve struggled to name any film they watched recently, and others are struggling to find a movie that everyone in the class has seen as a shared reference point. One damning line says: “Even students who are interested in going into filmmaking don’t necessarily love watching films.”
One professor thankfully adds that “the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are”.
Recent films with long running times include “Avatar: Fire and Ash” (197 minutes), “Killers of the Flower Moon” (202 minutes) and “The Brutalist” (215 minutes).
Source: THR
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