Question - To AK?

[madali]

Here is a film question, maybe AK knows, as he is a film student. Why are films generally 90 minutes? When did this start? How did they find this magical number?

[animatedude]

oh it all started with silent films theaters blah blah blah...it's a just a business/marketing thing.

[X.]

There is no single, absolute answer why it happened. But this topic was discussed at some point in one of my film history classes and, from memory, here were some of the reasons that were cited:

1) Historical pattern: early films by the Lumiere brothers and Méliès used to be shorter and single-reel. Eventually as film became more mass-market and less for the aristocrats, it made sense to expand it to multi-reels and make special events out of them by adding live music and such.

2) War: The first and second world war brought great misery to the people, who would flock to the movies for cheap entertainment and to "escape" for more than just a couple of minutes. This point is complementary to the above point.

3) Successful films: once movie production moved to the west coast of US, a lot of movies were made. When it began to be noticed that some of the most successful films shared a longer runtime (multi-reels closer or over to 90 minutes), this became a sort of an automatic standard. In my personal research, I have found The Howard Hawks Factor to be critical factor: 90 minutes define his films.

Of course there is no artistic reason for 90 minutes. It is very simply a business/industry "best practice."

[madali]

Thanks