Titanic was a long film, i know that can't be the longest.

At 8/2/14 03:17 AM, WahyahRanger wrote: A simple and quick Google search tells us...

240 hours of watching a movie. you must be high.

I honestly thought it was gonna be whatever this was advertising.

Well, I guess there have been longer films.

Although, I want to see the 42-reel version of "Greed"-- which is impossible.

Does anyone know where I can find this movie? It looks pretty damn insane.

TITANIC

It's important in this discussion to draw a line between experimental films and narrative films, since most people will be inclined towards the latter, and experimental films (especially older ones) may not get much theatrical screen time (if any at all in this day and age) outside of specialist festivals. Then you've got the problem of documentaries, are they narrative films in the most common sense? A good deal of the longest narrative films listed on Wikipedia, including the top two, are documentaries. And then you've got serials! Wikipedia lists Louis Feuillade's pioneering crime thriller Les Vampires - released in ten parts of varying lengths in 1915 and 1916 - but not Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1980 adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz, a TV miniseries running at over 900 minutes that reportedly had a theatrical run in the US (most say in parts, some say some fringe cinemas played it all at once, I think). Just to top it all off, you have the aforementioned Greed, a wonderful film that's sadly lost to us in its longest form of around nine or ten hours... but which was stretched from two to four more recently using production stills to fill in the gaps.

But yes, Modern Times Forever is (for now) the easiest answer.

At 8/2/14 03:18 AM, XXPWNERGODXX wrote:

At 8/2/14 03:17 AM, WahyahRanger wrote: A simple and quick Google search tells us...

240 hours of watching a movie. you must be high.

It gets longer...

"Ambiancé", a project in which he intends to have run for 720 hours (30 days)

o.o

At 8/2/14 06:27 AM, n00bman wrote: Does anyone know where I can find this movie? It looks pretty damn insane.

It'll probably pop up if you try to illegally download it.

I haven't seen anything nearly as long as the movies mentioned. The longest I've seen is Red Cliff, which is about 12 minutes shy of 5 hours long. That is, if you count it as one movie, since it's separated into two parts. It's quite a good epic and I'd recommend it.

The longest movie in the world is somewhere in the database of a monitoring system that keeps camera recordings and is probably named something like "AEM0034992810398235".

At 8/2/14 04:51 AM, NGPulp wrote: I honestly thought it was gonna be whatever this was advertising.

Well, I guess there have been longer films.

Although, I want to see the 42-reel version of "Greed"-- which is impossible.

8 hours long and only 12 people have seen it? That's insane!

; The original version must've explained far more, there's no possible way they could've shaved 8 hours of material down to 2 and a half... that's so disappointing and it must've been quite a feat if the 12 people who saw it argue that it could've been the greatest film ever made.

At 8/3/14 05:39 AM, Skeptick wrote:

At 8/2/14 04:51 AM, NGPulp wrote: Although, I want to see the 42-reel version of "Greed"-- which is impossible.

8 hours long and only 12 people have seen it? That's insane!

It sounds like quite the interesting concept, to release a movie to a select few

; The original version must've explained far more, there's no possible way they could've shaved 8 hours of material down to 2 and a half... that's so disappointing and it must've been quite a feat if the 12 people who saw it argue that it could've been the greatest film ever made.

I really want to see this film for the reason that it had been shaven down to 2 hours and the 8 hour version probably explains much, much more.

The holy grail of film archivers, they call it.

Imagine what kind of feat it would be to be in possesion ot/find the lost footage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_films

At 8/3/14 05:39 AM, Skeptick wrote: ; The original version must've explained far more, there's no possible way they could've shaved 8 hours of material down to 2 and a half... that's so disappointing and it must've been quite a feat if the 12 people who saw it argue that it could've been the greatest film ever made.

At 8/3/14 06:19 AM, NGPulp wrote: I really want to see this film for the reason that it had been shaven down to 2 hours and the 8 hour version probably explains much, much more.

If you're interested, I'm pretty sure the four hour version I mentioned above is available on Youtube. It's an interesting story even when it has to be filled in with stills, and at least its dramatic realism survives. We also still have the harrowing ending.

The story of the film itself is one of mainstream cinema's cruel truths really. von Stroheim wanted to border on the experimental and create an attentive adaptation of the novel McTeague (which is fairly bulky to begin with), while Irving Thalberg wanted something acceptably commercial. It's hard to land on either side, really. It's tragic we'll never see the full cut, but Thalberg went on to have his hand in creating a whole new popular look and feel for Hollywood and is still remembered as one of the first great producers despite this massive "crime against cinema". von Stroheim is thought of highly today, particularly by those into their auteurs, but at the same time his continued extravagance more or less stunted his career.

The longest movie that I would ever sincerely watch would probably be the 1968 version of "War And Peace". It's about eight hours long, although some cuts are seven hours. I heard about the documentary, Shoah, which is nine hours long, which I would probably never watch anyway. The longest movie with an actual plot is "Berlin Alexenderplatz" at a whopping fifteen hours! There are some movies longer, but none of them have any plot and were just made for the sole purpose of being the longest ever.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Approximately five hours of it is people floating in space to classical music.

At 8/3/14 11:58 AM, Bit wrote: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Approximately five hours of it is people floating in space to classical music.

"Overrated, Slow as hell, not that interesting, muh Kubrick, GOAT film."

At 8/3/14 11:58 AM, Bit wrote: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Approximately five hours of it is people floating in space to classical music.

This made me laugh.

Congratulations.

At 8/2/14 06:27 AM, n00bman wrote: Does anyone know where I can find this movie? It looks pretty damn insane.

Well, that article made me sad in a few different ways.

At 8/2/14 04:51 AM, NGPulp wrote: Although, I want to see the 42-reel version of "Greed"-- which is impossible.

And I want to see the complete version of Metropolis. But that aint gonna happen.

At 8/4/14 01:00 AM, Viper wrote: And I want to see the complete version of Metropolis. But that aint gonna happen.

At least a full version of Metropolis probably technically exists though; Greed in its entirety, like the intended Magnificent Ambersons and countless others (it's strange to look at old photos of cinemas, with the marquee announcing the showing of a film we will one, not only never see, but two, probably have little idea as to what it was actually about), will probably only be shown in our minds, or in the great cinema in the sky. I think the two or three scenes still missing from Metropolis were included in the famous "Argentine copy" (or maybe one or two similar versions found in different archives) that was found in the last decade, but were practically unwatchable due to the bad condition of the film. I love seeing the newly re-added footage in the most recent releases - they do go some way towards adding a more psychological dimension to the film - but given how unfortunate they look, one dreads to think about what the still-lost scenes look like.

I could be wrong, as I've been tripped up by the long and confusing story of Metropolis' re-compilation before. Either way, at least searching has brought us to the brink of a complete version. And newer releases like the Masters of Cinema one come with little booklets of essays about it, which is always nice.

At 8/4/14 01:00 AM, Viper wrote:

At 8/2/14 04:51 AM, NGPulp wrote: Although, I want to see the 42-reel version of "Greed"-- which is impossible.

And I want to see the complete version of Metropolis. But that aint gonna happen.

Metropolis, as well; thanks for reminding me.

Greed and Metropolis are on my to-watch list.

At 8/2/14 06:27 AM, Indeks wrote: TITANIC

Titanic is nothing compared to the ones that can last for days.

Ambiancé.

At 8/4/14 01:42 AM, NuScarab wrote: At least a full version of Metropolis probably technically exists though; Greed in its entirety, like the intended Magnificent Ambersons and countless others (it's strange to look at old photos of cinemas, with the marquee announcing the showing of a film we will one, not only never see, but two, probably have little idea as to what it was actually about), will probably only be shown in our minds, or in the great cinema in the sky.

Yeah you have a good point. There are tons of films that'll never been seen in their entirety due to studios either not wanting to release the full movie or the full films were destroyed.

I think the two or three scenes still missing from Metropolis were included in the famous "Argentine copy" (or maybe one or two similar versions found in different archives) that was found in the last decade, but were practically unwatchable due to the bad condition of the film. I love seeing the newly re-added footage in the most recent releases - they do go some way towards adding a more psychological dimension to the film - but given how unfortunate they look, one dreads to think about what the still-lost scenes look like.

Yeah it's just two scenes. They're not super important. But they're vital to the movie being watched in it's entirety. The complete copies that were found did have the scenes but they weren't salvageable. So unless another copy happens to turn up with them intact, we'll never get to see them added back to the movie.

At 8/4/14 01:05 PM, Viper wrote: Yeah you have a good point. There are tons of films that'll never been seen in their entirety due to studios either not wanting to release the full movie or the full films were destroyed.

Indeedy, and heck, much of the time it was just how films lived and died due to the nitrates and other components. Preservation wasn't really a thing until comparatively recently, and heck, even some of the earlier folks who were thinking of the future had accidents. Harold Lloyd pushed preservation and may have been more popular than Keaton and even Chaplin at times, but many of his films were still lost - like so many others - in a fire. His legacy has probably suffered because of it. Clara Bow was a massive pop culture icon in the '20s, and its astounding how many of her films have been lost... but at least she was luckier than her contemporary Theda Bara, who starred in, I'd say, around 40 or 50 features, of which about 5 (I think, if that) survive. So interesting, and so sad.

It's a pretty big surprise we have so much of Metropolis, all things considered, especially considering it wasn't a resounding success at a time when the lifetime of a film was seen to be limited.

A movie is supposed to be 1-3 hours long, anything longer then it's not really a movie, but I think that was already brought up.

Well, they made ANOTHER movie that would be the longest ever. I remember when Wikipedia said that the longest ever was "The Cure For Insomnia" but it's since been surpassed by SIX movies. Honestly, they make insanely long movies so long it's not that special anymore. The new one will be "Ambiance" which won't be released until 2020, and it'll be THIRTY DAYS LONG.

At 8/2/14 07:21 AM, Holon wrote: It gets longer...

"Ambiancé", a project in which he intends to have run for 720 hours (30 days)

imagine the amount of pop corn and soda you'd need to last the whole movie

The longest movie I've seen was Ben-Hur.