I recall that Gandhi had an intermission of several minutes in the theater. They probably had the break between the two cassettes at the same place.
If Titanic split right before they hit the iceberg, you could simply toss tape one in the trash.
As for The Deer Hunter, I’m shocked the wedding scene didn’t need a separate third tape of its own. 
Commercial video releases were recorded at SP (standard play) on a 120 minute tape. You could record on a T-120 at SLP (super long play) for six hours, but there was a trade-off in picture quality. There was also a less common four hour speed. This was for VHS, anyway. You could use a longer tape, but it also meant a thinner tape which was more prone to jamming and breakage.
Funny story about “Gone with the Wind”, which was split into two sides of the disc.
I watched about 15 minutes of it before realizing that I had begun with Disc 2.
Who knew? Seemed like a natural beginning of a movie.
mmm
I have a rather recent, wonderful DVD edition, and it’s two DVDs of course cut before the intermission (which is, as I remember correctly, a few minutes of a black screen with an intermission musical score, which of course is wonderful as the whole score of that movie. That’s how the film was originally shown in the theaters).
I remember ragtime had an intermission when it was on HBO for like 15 minutes …it was right after the cops killed the black guy who was trying to take the baby that was found in the garden (whom I think died anyway)
Sound of Music was on two tapes. Tape one ended just after the puppet show and before the ball that Georg gives.
Reds and The Bridge on the River Kwai. I worked at a video store and both were among my favorites.
Reds hasn’t aged well at all but Kwai is still an amazing film.
I once owned a special edition of Blade Runner that was split onto 4 sides of 2 laser disks. That was just insane.
IIRC, the first tape ended right after they hit the iceberg, so you had to watch about the last few minutes of Tape I. Fortunately, you didn’t have to rewind it very far to be ready for the next viewing. Skipping that first 110 or so minutes really moved the film along.
I couldn’t tell you if it was or wasn’t well timed but Magnolia was on two VHS tapes.
Should’ve had one of the dual-side dual-disc players.
Not sure how it was done on VHS, but Woodstock had a double-sided DVD release in the early 2000s. To this day I can’t recall another disc quite like it.
As I recall (and I’ll admit it’s been a few years) the standard VHS tape was a 120, which would record 120 minutes at standard speed. You could also record at slow speed or very slow speed which would give you either 240 minutes or 360 minutes of recording time but would also give you a poorer quality picture. Most commercial copies of movies were done at standard speed.
There were also other sizes tapes; 150’s and 180’s, which would give you either 150 or 180 minutes of recording time at standard speed. But these tapes were thinner and tending to break or tangle up in your VCR. Again, commercial movies generally didn’t use these tapes because movies got rented and got pretty rough treatment anyway.
I think there were also shorter tapes like 60’s and 90’s.
A T-120 could have up hold up to ~124min for NTSC (U.S. recordings). The E-180 (PAL, primarily used in Europe) could hold up ~127min if used in an NTSC recorder. T-140 cassettes, available primarily available only to duplicators could hold up to 144min using the standard thickness tape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS All videocassette tapes, VHS and Beta could hold slightly more than their stated time to ensure the full recording time. I had some L-125 (30min) Beta tapes that held ~32mins of recordings.
Tape duplicators could get any custom tape length, I’ve seen T-5 and T-10 tapes used for video singles and specialty presentation videos. But since the major cost of the videocassette was the case and reels, most duplicators used standard length cassettes, T-30, T-60, T-90, T-120 for VHS, L-125, L-250, L-370, L-500, L-750 for Beta.
Thinner tapes and lower speeds (LP, SLP/EP) weren’t used for major studio releases because of the jamming and incompatibility issues.
AFAIK, *Cleopatra *was the first movie released on two cassettes in 1992. There’s a long and ultimately pointless discussion about it at videohelp.com https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/394218-Betamax-digitizing-help-of-a-rare-film
Woodstock was released on two cassettes and the Directors Cut Blu-Ray release if on two discs for the movie. The first Criterion DVD release of Seven Samurai was on two discs, as well I believe *2001: A Space Odyssey *and other movies over two hours were.
The maximum video length of a Video DVD-9 (dual-layer) DVD is two hours to maintain quality. Up to ~11-13 hours of DVD compliant video can be recorded in very bad video quality. https://www.videohelp.com/dvd, DVD Authoring and Production: An Authoritative Guide to DVD-Video, DVD-ROM ... - Ralph LaBarge - Google Books
First Criterion SS was 1 DVD. 2nd Criterion was 2 DVDs (plus DVD of bonuses.) 2001 doesn’t have a Criterion release, but both Warner releases are a single disc. (The second disc in the SE is bonuses.)
Not even remotely accurate. There have been many DVDs of movies over 2 hours released on DVD-5s (especially in the early years) and vast numbers of movies above 2 hours published on DVD-9s.
The longest movie I ever saw on a (single) commercially produced VHS was “On the Beach,” which appears to clock in at 2:14.
Some longer movies you may have seen on single-tape VHS:
Close Encounters of the Third Kind 2:15
Return of the Jedi 2:16
Aliens 2:34
Terminator 2 2:36
There are more out there.
The extended edition of LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring was on a double-sided disc. IIRC the split was right as they are leaving Rivendell and you get the majestic shot of them on the hillside with the swelling music theme. Then a menu screen came up saying to turn over the disc to side 2.