At 206 minutes, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ would be longest-running Oscar Best Picture winner in more than 60 years
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As those who went out to see “Killers of the Flower Moon” since it opened last Friday can attest, it’s a challenge for anyone to make it all the way through without a bathroom break. The film is three hours and 26 minutes, or 206 minutes, without an intermission, testing bladders from sea to shining sea. But by itself, does the Martin Scorsese-directed epic’s marathon length make it a better or worse bet to win the Academy Award for Best Picture?
Let’s just say that it’s fairly rare – but in no way unprecedented – for a movie that’s at or exceeds three hours to take the Oscar crown.
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In fact, of the 95 films to cart off the Best Picture trophy, 11 have clocked in at or exceeded three hours. That’s just a tick under 10.5 percent. So it doesn’t exactly happen every year, or even every other year – more like once a decade on average. Is “Killers of the Flower Moon” that once? We shall obviously see. Were the movie to pull it off, it would be the longest-running top Oscar winner since “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1963. “Lawrence” ran for a whopping 227 minutes, or just 13 minutes short of four hours. (“Oppenheimer” would also be a three-hour victor with its 180-minute running time.)
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“Lawrence” was also the longest film to take the biggest Oscar prize of all time, besting 1940 winner “Gone with the Wind” (221 minutes) and 1960 victor “Ben-Hur” (a mere 212), meaning that “Killers of the Flower Moon” would be the fourth-longest ever to be so honored. Other past winners that have exceeded three hours in length include “The Godfather Part II” (1975) at 202 minutes; “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2004) at 201 minutes; “Schindler’s List” (1994) at 195 minutes; and “Titanic” (1998) at 194 minutes.
Notably, the 1954 Best Picture winner “From Here to Eternity” didn’t go on for eternity at all – a mere 118 minutes.
And which films that carted off the Best Picture Oscar were shortest-running? That record holder is “Marty,” which won the big prize in 1956 at a length of a mere 90 minutes, due at least in part to the fact that the Paddy Chayefky-scripted story started life on TV as an edition of “The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse” in 1953 that Chayefsky merely expanded upon for the feature. Also clocking in on the low end of the Best Picture average were 1978 victor “Annie Hall” at 93 minute; “Driving Miss Daisy” (1990) at 99 minutes; and both “Chicago” (2003) and “The Artist” (2012) at 100 minutes.
Over the past 50 years of the Academy Awards, the average Best Picture champ ran 134.6 minutes, or just short of two and a quarter hours. Trust me, I did the math, and even with my trusty iPhone calculator I had to check it a few times.
Now, let’s turn our attention to Scorsese in particular. He’s directed nine films that have been nominated for Best Picture: “Taxi Driver” (1977), “Raging Bull” (1981), “Goodfellas” (1991),”Gangs of New York” (2003), “The Aviator” (2005), “The Departed” (2007) – the only of his directed films to win Best Picture and Best Director) – “Hugo” (2012), “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2014) and “The Irishman” (2020).
In general, the length of Scorsese’s directorial efforts has ticked up measurably over the decades. In the 1970s, only “New York, New York” (1977, 145 minutes) exceeded two hours, with “Mean Streets” (1973, 112 minutes) and “Taxi Driver” (1976, 114 minutes) coming in several minutes under.
The last Scorsese-directed films to come in under two hours were “The King of Comedy” (1982, 109 minutes) and “After Hours” (1985, 97 minutes). His average minutes per movie crept up steadily through the late 1980s, the 1990s and into the new millennium, with the last three at or exceeding three hours: “Wolf of Wall Street” (180 minutes), “The Irishman” (209 minutes) and “Killers of the Flower Moon” (206 minutes). So in fact, his latest movie has dropped a full 180 seconds from his previous most recent. We’ll see how that impacts its Best Picture chances.
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