Over the past few weeks I’ve been working through my Universal Horror Legacy Collection DVDs. Many of these feature films from the 30’s/40’s are little more than an hour long.
This got me wondering: At what point in Movie History did the movie-going public come to expect a feature film to be at least 90mins.? Sure, every once in a while someone will release a feature that falls short of 90mins, but it’s rare and usually provokes comment (I remember reviews of both H20 and MIIB which made very harsh criticism of the short running times- Jeez, who could have possibly wanted more of those films!?).
There are certainly plenty of movies that either predate or were contemporary with the Universal Horror films but had a much longer running time. So when did filmmakers start to feel the pressure to deliver 90mins minimum? Did it coincide with the beginning of Television?
I can’t answer the question directly, but something to bear in mind is that films from the 30s and 40s would have been shown as part of a full programme: cartoon, trailers, newsreel, first and second feature, and sometimes an extra short feature. People went to the cinema for an evening’s entertainment – two and a half to three hours or maybe more.
Right. Add to that how after the 1950s there is TV, with standard 30 and 60 minute programming blocks and the expectation that theatrical releases deliver “more” – thus widescreen pictures and greater-than-80-minute running times.
About the same time as the cinema double-bill was phased out, I suspect. Most films with a running time under 75 minutes or so were B-pictures, to be shown with a main attraction or in pairs.