Why movies went from 15 minutes to 2 hours

Movies used to be really short. How did it change?
Almanac Hollywouldn't is our miniseries on big changes to movies that came from outside Hollywood. Watch all of the episodes right here on KZbin.
Episode 1: • The first movie with CGI
Episode 3: • How stop motion animat...
Why are movies about two hours long? In this episode of Vox Almanac, Vox’s Phil Edwards researches the history of movies - and discovers the Italian silent film classic that changed movies forever.
Subscribe to our channel! goo.gl/0bsAjO
In the 1900s, movies were typically around 15 minutes long - that was the length of one reel (depending on playback speed and a few other variables). But in 1913, that changed significantly thanks to the blockbuster “Quo Vadis” - a two-hour epic that wasn’t just long, but had blockbuster ambitions.
Quo Vadis involved huge stunts, thousands of extras, and real Roman locations, taking movies to a scale little before seen. When it premiered, instead of playing as one of many short films in nickelodeons, it debuted in big concert halls and other prestigious venues. That led to a record box office and an industry-changing trend that started with director DW Griffith and spread elsewhere.
If you want to read more, I relied on the following books:
A History of Narrative Film by David A. Cook
wwnorton.com/books/A-History-...
This book provides a good overview of film history.
Film Before Griffith by John Fell
books.google.com/books/about/...
This book chronicles all the films that influenced movies before DW Griffith came on the stage.
The Silent Cinema by Liam O’Leary
books.google.com/books/about/...
Another good overview to look at the international silent film scene.
The Griffith Project
www.amazon.com/Griffith-Proje...
Many silent films are lost, so anthologies like these, which describe each film and include data on length, are useful.
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: goo.gl/XFrZ5H

[@holyravioli5795]

You know its bad when they were calling it racist in 1915.

[@Nugcon]

Everybody gangsta till they call something racist in 1915

[@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive]

It’s responsible for restarting the then disbanded Ku Klux Klan who decided to make terrorism and lynching it’s staple instead of something only previously done by its most fringe elements.

[@blankeyed67]

DoctorWeeTodd Yikes.

[@ClickLikeAndSubscribe]

Worth $5 a seat! Lol. That's like $130 in today's money.

[@mahaputera7]

@@ClickLikeAndSubscribe Gimme back ma MANEYYYY!!

[@somespecies]

Imagine waiting for the Endgame movie for a whole year but it was 15 mins long

[@grysndotwav]

Might as well have been 😭

[@samuelgodoy6044]

@@grysndotwav honestly 😂

[@18007422066]

That would really end badly 😂

[@yoandrireyes1429]

Shut up i have to rewatch the movie one more time to understand everything😂😂 imagine 15 💀

[@bakhtyarsayed]

Ok but why choose that profile pic

[@HMcQ7891]

"Nickel". "Odeon". That revelation broke my brain so hard I blacked out.

[@ThatGuyCanmanNC]

HPMcQueen but that’s what they where called “Nickel (cause they were a nickel) then Odeon for movie/film Please don’t hate if you don’t even know.

[@HMcQ7891]

@@ThatGuyCanmanNC Yes, kid. We know. No one's hating.

[@Kitties_are_pretty]

​@@ThatGuyCanmanNC Dude. A video contains a piece of information. Someone who didn't know that information comments that they learned that information from the video. Then you come along to say you already knew that piece of information before you saw the video. Congratulations on being a big-brained genius who already knew the etymology of "Nickelodeon", you truly are superior to the others who walk this earth.

[@ThatGuyCanmanNC]

Joshua Brooks yay I’m superior!

[@synthvault451]

Thats sarcasm

[@MostlyPennyCat]

"Worth a $5 seat?" Nope, that's $121 today.

[@ortiztuc1]

$1.32 is $.05

More like a little over a dollar. Just multiply by 20 for the pre-WWII era.

[@Cooe.]

Back in the day there was absolutely nothing like it though, and it was an experience you could get nowhere else. It's more comparable to going to a Broadway show in today's terms, in which case the price makes perfect sense.

[@lewiscullen8236]

$5 in 1915 = $127.40 in 2019. However, this doesn't take into account comparative prices of living i.e. Purchasing Power Parity, which would be less. Furthermore, it should really be better compared to going to see the Opera or a high-end Theatre production - both of which people still pay that sort of money for. This was a new technology and a new art form so I'd say the experience would have been worth the price.

[@MedK001]

@@lewiscullen8236 Wait, what? Why was $5 back then worth so much

[@heroscape293]

"this is a foot". no sir, that is a measuring tape

[@jeromecabarus6893]

r/me_irl

[@ThomasTubeHD]

Ha, caught em

[@davidbanan.]

How does this not have more likes?

[@anggaseptian9935]

India: "two hours? That's a rookie number"

[@user-hl6sn4jk2k]

Hey find another street

[@TwistVisuals]

@@PennyMsElite It's if you count the intermission, the advertisements, the anti-cigarette and drinking PSAs that appear before the film and the thank you cards at the start of the movie. That all make the films way longer than it should be.

[@anandvidekar1325]

Bhaag milkha bhaag

[@anthonyc4138]

@@PennyMsElite lol

[@doc_mirror]

Ms. Elite in older movies they were longer but they’re getting shorter and shorter in the present movies

[@robiking011]

In the movie Titanic from 1997 there's a scene where Jack talks about something he saw on ''a Nickelodeon'' and always wanted to do it. Obviously he wasn't talking about the cartoon channel.

[@thesalvadorian]

"It's called Slime Time Live...looks like so much fun"

[@francescodegregorio2824]

"CAPTAIN THE SLIME HAS BUST THE ENGINES AND CRACKED THE WALL, WE'RE EMBARKING WATER"

[@CactusMoovies]

metric people: rest of the world

[@simonfrederiksen104]

US, US colonies and territories, Liberia, and Burma/Myanmar use one system (450 million people) - UK & commonwealth uses a mix of both (100 million) - Rest of the world, 7 billion people, some 170+ countries, use metric.

[@CactusMoovies]

@@simonfrederiksen104 yes I simplified a bit :) thanks for the specific details

[@simonfrederiksen104]

@@CactusMoovies You provided a nice setup, couldn't waste it:)

[@Marcelaaaa4]

Exactly, the meter is the international sistem, they should adapt to the rest of the world for better communication and understanding

[@PureepatArttawejkul]

@@simonfrederiksen104 FYI Burma/Myanmar use their own system not the imperial one.

[@stuartcole4845]

It’s strange to have this discussion without mentioning the Australian film from 1906, “the Kelly Gang” which had a 60 minute run time and is generally considered the first feature length film.

[@PasteurizedLettuce]

The strangest thing is to have this discussion without the extremely obvious answer that Theatre had long standardized this form lol

[@bewilde_]

Interesting to think about how with the rise of streaming combined with the episodic series format people will bingewatch for even longer than that

[@DarkAngelEU]

Well, finally cinéma is receiving the narrative span it deserves. Author directors already made movies that are longer than just two or three hours, Bela Tarr's Satantango being a famous example that takes 7h30min. David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return can also be viewed as a 13 hour movie, which is simply amazing. In India alot of movies have a general running time of at least 3 hours. Finally we are going back to an age of myth making that will be akin to that of the Greeks. I don't know about others, but for me this is immensely inspiring to be a part of.

[@janNowa]

@@DarkAngelEU I've always felt that a film is more akin to a novella than a full novel. There just isn't enough time to tell a lot of stories within a 1 to 2 hour window. Highly serialized television fixes that.

[@castorluis1741]

1912: movie is 15 minutes 2019: trailers & advertisements is 15 minutes before movie starts

[@kaykutcher2103]

Twenty eight minutes and forty seven seconds. Timed it and that was the result after I was nine minutes late to the screening.

[@valentinozangobbo]

One good reason may be that in Italy we have tradition of operas that were hours long, so maybe was natural to proceed in that way of storytelling... Good stories deserves adeguate space and time to be put on scenes

[@Julq4]

quo vadis was this long because the book is almost 600 pages... Everyone who's from Poland knows the struggle of reading it

[@jackwisniewski3859]

Yeah but it's also just really cool and important to our nation!

[@chlopaczekhula3524]

Yeah it’s very long but I actually read it quiet quickly while my class moved the exam for it by a couple of months and they still didn’t read it

[@PandaBlyat]

Metro 2033 is over 700 pages

[@sunderland666]

Try War and Peace

[@Julq4]

@@sunderland666 Quo Vadis is a mandatory book for 12/13 year olds.

[@erzan]

*Me learning the origin of the word Nickelodeon.* 321... 💥 🤯 💥

[@MinenArbeiterLP]

Ok boomer

[@---rk9vl]

Thanos what does this phrase mean? I see it everywhere! I’m a millennial I should know😅

[@rufodeer5421]

@@---rk9vl ok boomer

[@user-jh3kz7dp2z]

@@---rk9vl it's a commonly known meme where zoomers respond to the qualms of boomers with a simple "Ok boomer". This completely decimates the population of annoying baby boomers. Quite effective, would recommend.

[@MinenArbeiterLP]

@@user-jh3kz7dp2z Ok boomer

[@OmegaFalcon]

The more interesting fact was the meaning of Nickelodeon

[@wellesradio]

OmegaFalcon How long did you live life without ever bothering to look it up?

[@fr-2158]

@@wellesradio "Look it up" was not a thing back then. By the time it became a thing, we grew up and was no longer curious about what Nickelodeon meant.

[@spaceinbetween6591]

Riju Mon ok boomer?

[@fr-2158]

@@spaceinbetween6591 Ok boomer

[@OmegaFalcon]

@@wellesradio I've been alive 20 years, never once even considered Nickelodean's name interesting enough to look up its meaning. If I would have had to guess I'd have probably thought it was the founders name.

[@Cyrillic_108]

Finally learning what Nickelodeon means. So late..

[@jonnathan1869]

0:57 bruh you said "metric people" as if we're the weird ones using it 😂😂😂😂

[@1985toyotacamry]

You have to do that otherwise people will riot

[@gameplaychannel1309]

But your the ones complaing every vox video that uses the imperial system

[@deadchannel12345]

@@gameplaychannel1309 yeah because america is only 330million out of over 7.7billion

[@Kenshi876]

@@deadchannel12345 It's not only americans that don't use metric.

[@APerson-jf4ls]

The only other countries that don't use metric are Myanmar and Liberia

[@IzzyGorgeous]

No mention of it in vid but the first feature length film was an Australian film called The Story of the Kelly Gang released in 1906. Fun fact for any film nerds out there.

[@someguyontheinternet7]

Izzy G What’s it about?

[@arrgghh1555]

@@someguyontheinternet7 Is the title not self explanatory enough?

[@someguyontheinternet7]

Arrgghh Lol nope, what’s a Kelly gang?

[@cl9925]

Ashwin Umapathi google

[@fr-2158]

@@someguyontheinternet7 Well, it's exactly what it sounds like... Story of Kelly and his gang

[@tremolo2109]

I'm guessibg Quo Vadis was the start of the road show tour for films too, interesting

[@wellesradio]

Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912)

[@coyfish4610]

It isn't, but they pretend like Russia and Australia weren't making longer films. Some film series this is.

[@kkfoto]

The series is about "big changes to movies that came from outside Hollywood" "Quo Vadis" was not the first feature length film, but it provoked a big change. That's it.

[@leonardo3ro310]

1912: Can you imagine how good the movies will be in the future??? The future: *Emoji Movie*

[@DavidSMurga]

While narratively it is a mediocre film, if back in 1912 anyone would wonder about films in the future, they would most likely refer to the technology used to make those films, being the Emoji Movie not the best example, but certainly one that could fulfill expectations on futuristic technology in films for a 1912's audience, it would do so even for a 1990's audience.

[@joneymujar9854]

dragon ball: evolution

[@shadowhaziq4326]

@@joneymujar9854 The Last Airbender

[@darrenbutler9819]

Cats

[@alexandraferguson5084]

Could you guys do an episode on how movies got from averaging at an hour and 20 minutes in 2013 to 2-3 hours long in 2019? I've always wondered what the shift was to make movies so much longer than they were even 10 years ago

[@cyanthestickman9933]

2019: 2 hour movies 2022: *BLACK SCREEN 10 HOURS*

[@11305205219]

2019: 2 hour movies 2049: VR Room lifetime

[@peppapig-vw3zr]

ahhhhhh

[@quantum.9883]

I would actually go to watch a black screen for 10 hours

[@ymcajil6816]

9999999999:999999HOURS LONG OF MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@torbenploesser3557]

Thank you, imperial guy!

[@ALROD]

They’re getting close to 3 hours now

[@armangutierrez3697]

Yo there are movies thats 7 hrs long

[@sushantgulati]

Martin Scorsese: Hold my martini

[@anisanurraudah8383]

*Bollywood entered the chat*

[@nygren83]

Yeah, ca. 2,5 hours seems to be the new average for big budget movies now.

[@robiking011]

It's nothing new. There's many movies from the 1930s , 1940s and 1950s that are 3 or 4 hours long.

[@scottluxon2525]

No chat in this about The Story of the Kelly Gang - the first feature length film. It came from Australia.

[@Obez45]

I'm more impressed about the origin of the 'Nickelodeon' name

[@MissyGloestar]

This is fabulously well done! But an Australian film was the first to be feature length - The Story of the Kelly Gang, released in 1906! Toured the UK in 1908.

[@navrajlally]

Now just the credits are 15 minutes

[@FrothingFanboy]

One of my favorite movies is the 293 minute (nearly 5 hour) version of Das Boot. It was originally shown on TV where it was split into six 50 minute chunks, but was put into one continuous package for DVD. The theatrical cut is 149 minutes, about half the length of the longest version.

[@Achill101]

The book's author, Lothar Bucheim, liked the long cut, because it showed the time on board as it was, long boredom and high horror, which the short theatrical cut couldn't do.

[@krower11]

Here for you metric people, so like every one in the world 👀🙈

[@smufti255]

krower11 n.o

[@m.af.i.a]

We systeme de international need u. Pardon my writing skills.

[@wendel5868]

krower11 Yes like we are the minority lol

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

The metric system: The reference for the American inch, officially defined as 25.4 mm.

[@carrotcake6572]

iron.f16 of the people who watch this video? Probably

[@masterimbecile]

Now we are seeing the rise of mini-series.

[@Scorpio_Moonshine]

Mini-series have been around for quite awhile. They're just coming back. I won't say my age. 🤐

[@jeremiahtisdell4823]

@@Scorpio_Moonshine Ok boomer

[@Jacksmith10000]

You should look into the DoJ’s antitrust rules on theater ownership - the 1948 Paramount Decrees that banned studios from owning movie theaters, until now. Yesterday, the DoJ announced the decree has become outdated (in the streaming age) and will be repealed over the next 2 years. Obviously, independent theaters are not very keen on the change.

[@Vox]

Patrick Welden Didn’t know about the announcement- that’s really interesting. We definitely thought about that story for this series since it shaped so much of movie history. -Phil

[@StartARiot]

The biggest change in the film industry for me is either the end of vertical integration in the late 40s or the end of the Motion Picture Production Code in the mid-60s.

[@leytonjay]

Brilliantly researched and written, beautifully edited and produced. Thank you. x

[@nickgehr6916]

2077: *10hrs ads back to back in 20 mins movie*

[@tegesnripendra9473]

2077 : bugs, lots of bugs

[@aaronchristopher71]

Vox has been knocking the ball out of the park in the last year. These little documentaries are gold. Almanac, Earworm. Concise, well edited gems on crazy interesting topics. Good job

[@robinhoodieradio3394]

Love these almanac videos. Keep this great content coming 😁

[@idbeurbutterfly3394]

1912: 15 minutes=A movie 2019: 15 minutes= A video for KZbin (Edit: Omg in only 2 hours I got more than 300 likes... I don't have words to explain my surprised face lol)

[@ahsanarshad3457]

2050: 15 minutes=A commercial

[@gogogooner]

In the future, a mainstream youtube video will be 2 hours long 😱

[@ghst8242]

2030 : 20 minutes unskippable KZbin ads

[@iamdunn1]

@@ghst8242 don't give youtube any ideas, they may start that next week

[@TwistVisuals]

@@gogogooner Podcasts on KZbin like Joe Rogan are already longer than that and rake in millions of views

[@phlvn100]

Outer me: that‘s a interesting video from vox Inner me: NICKEL ODEON

[@Nietabs]

I love your channel! Informative and Entertaining at the same time!

[@sprucegoose6933]

This is the kind of content I subscribed to your channel for!

[@far2kthoughts158]

Endgame battle was like 45minutes by itself 😂

[@sk8rgrlteen]

This was super interesting! Thanks Vox

[@simonfrederiksen104]

European movies prior to ww1 were constantly an hour or more - German, French, Italian - Not to mention Danish movies. An attention span of 15 minutes seems to be a thing solely nurtured in the US of A.

[@perthdude21]

It's interesting that you say that. The world's first full-length narrative feature film was an Australian movie - "The Story of the Kelly Gang". It was released in 1906 and ran for an hour.

[@Chameleonred5]

Attention span nothing. It was for the sake of efficiency.

[@simonfrederiksen104]

@@perthdude21 The Kelly gang, what a lovely topic. I remember him. I was looking at an old photograph of him at one point, currently escapes me why, maybe I was looking into trek mentality (Boer) Bush life, the limits of governance in developing areas, insurgency, Nama, Herero and whatnot. Strange to think that the Kelly gang was interesting enough in 1906 for someone to make a movie about them. If I remember correctly Kelly got executed some time in the 1870's, right?

[@simonfrederiksen104]

@@Chameleonred5 Sure:)

[@perthdude21]

@@simonfrederiksen104 yes he was executed in 1880.

[@ytancorbel1898]

Again great video from Vox, this channel is so informative!

I love this video! I love these topics from movies

[@agniveshpandey7774]

Loved this video. You can make a video on the french new wave . It's quite interesting.

[@lucasgelati]

Thanks for including the metric system Phil, about time!

[@Aluxix]

Wow I never knew that. Thanks for uploading this video.

[@noaht7000]

Good job man I liked the video a lot

[@sofiiakovorotna3400]

Thanks for the video

[@ivanterrible7362]

Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid"(1921) was advertised as "6 Reels of Joy"

[@davidbanan.]

They show a poster that calls it the drama epic of 8 reels (or something close)

[@GetVladimir]

Thank so much you for making these videos! Personally, I can’t seem to watch a movie much longer than 90 minutes, at least not in one sitting. Lately, I prefer TV shows with 20-40 minutes length a lot more than movies. Happy New Year 2020! 🎉

[@gowthamudhay2836]

i really like vox videos. dont know how they come u with the content!!

[@Igor-nk3cw]

I think it’s also the first movie based on a book (Henryk Sienkiewicz- ”Quo Vadis” published in 1896)

[@cappyjones]

I'm officially a nerd because I thought everyone knew where "Nickelodeon" came from 🤔

[@wellesradio]

Mr. 'Phet How does living under a false assumption make you a “nerd”?

[@nomcnuggetsforyou7602]

Mr. W why are you taking that comment so literal?

[@joeybaseball7352]

Me too. I guess there isnt a lot of curious people out there.

[@apexone5502]

As you get older, you realize that a lot of people aren't as curious as folks like us. I've known about Nickelodeons since my childhood in the '80s but I was always that kid that liked knowing about different things, origins, etc.

[@wellesradio]

@@apexone5502 My story is exactly like yours. We probably have a lot in common. Could have gone to school together and either been best buds or mortal enemies. lol

[@youknowwho8925]

2119: why movies went from 2 hours to 12 hours

[@garrettward1053]

You Know Who 😂😂😂

[@omaroff]

5:14 I guess the beginning year in the chart should be 1913 when Quo Vadis first came out :)

[@NinoGucciani2021]

Awesome journalism 🤷🏻‍♂️ 💯 🤘 keep up the good work # VoxNews

[@alypixar4690]

Great video

[@benni2294]

Where do you get your music from? Its beautiful🤩

[@sieyes9356]

Thank you for covering pre-WWI Italian cinema, it'a pretty important part of film history!

[@oyuyuy]

Americans: _All these fools in the world, using the metric system._ Also Americans: _We measure the length of movies in 'feet'._

[@jendubay3782]

Carl back then. Now we obviously measure in minutes.

[@vice88]

Carl Most Americans don’t say that though but okay.

[@oyuyuy]

@Vice 88 @Jen DuBay You two aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, are you?

[@amg1334]

Carl tf their right lol

[@oyuyuy]

@@amg1334 *You three

[@victornderu143]

Thank you for remembering "METRIC PEOPLE" 1:00

[@deadeaded]

Can you do an episode about the 1948 court case, United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. and maybe talk about contemporary parallels with streaming services?

[@gandamack1900]

Good show👍

[@duchi882]

*"Why movies went from 15 minutes to 2 hours"* because people who make out in the theatres started to last longer

[@pax4370]

🤔😂😂😂

[@petitio_principii]

Making out was only invented in qhe 1950s.

[@icecreamsandwich7522]

Seinfeld

[@wwcohwwg]

there was some pretty groundbreaking animation done by the NFB here in Canada, with Norman McClaren as the top example of how to push the boundaries of film, such as his Pas de Deux, and Synchromie (where he directly drew onto film to manipulate sound)

[@natebradley1999]

2:09 off topic but a little surreal seeing the Philippines and Cuba on a map of the U.S.

[@SuicideDog]

the uses of "intermission" in film , does it come from this time when movies started to get longer or from theater?

[@Lightningflamingice]

Theatrical plays. Plays like those of Shakespeare were exhausting to perform and see all in one go, both for the actors and the viewers. Intermissions are the reason plays are split into Acts, as after every act there was a roughly 15 min intermission for stage crew to set up the next scene

[@SuicideDog]

@@Lightningflamingice thank you

[@974724]

finally Vox is converting to metric ! thank you so much, feels good to be listened to as an audience

[@alpatrickva5563]

2:06 when they added the Philippines to the US map I felt that :)

[@daisyriepenaflorida1944]

Yes this is because the Philippines was under American Protectorate as Insular Government ruled by American Governor General

[@dannil9106]

AMAZING

[@petitio_principii]

Feature films were also referred to as long-métrages, metrage being like "mileage," but for rational, standardized metric units.

[@MrBinkyboo2000]

The story of the kelly gang made in australia in 1906 was the first feature length film actually

[@learnearnexplore3538]

Love your content.

[@rubenramos8900]

The most interesting about this is that I found out I'm a "metric person".

[@matheussanthiago9685]

I actually consider it kind of flattering, having my existence recognized by an American that usually doesn't happened

[@silversunset]

matheus Santhiago yeah. (many) Americans think they're the centre of the universe and are the most important. But other countries exist... most of the world uses metric... I don't know but if anyone is a [measurement] person, it has to be the imperial people who made this video

[@GlavenMaven]

Thanks for saying “....minutes FEWER!” 😊

[@redrumthebum]

2:09 Philippines in the US map? What a time.

[@TribbleLPTV]

Videos about the art of film are the best

[@Sela2125]

I find it so interesting that we tend to see the U.S. movie industry as the sole engine of modern cinema, but it was outside influence that spurred feature films as we know them today.

[@AL_THOMAS]

This was really interesting.

[@michaelwood368]

No mention of The Legend of the Kelly Gang?

[@AaronGriffin23]

Would love to get a Vox vid on the rise of the counter culture/indie film scene of the 1960s-1970s

[@blinski1]

Wow, I never knew 'Quo Vadis' was the film that had so enormous impact on the shape of the movie industry. Film that was based on the novel of our (Polish) treasured Nobel-winning writer, Henryk Sienkiewicz. I wonder why nobody ever talked about it here, at least I've never heard about it.

[@AlexanderRoseTz]

Great!

[@rayleeson6187]

Does anyone know what the music piece is called that starts at 2:49 ? Please,

[@Spidermansthirdcousin]

Every video I click on from vox is made by Phil. His videos are random and interesting to me

[@inodesnet]

It's worth mentioning the first feature length film. The Australian film, "The Story of the Kelly Gang" was the first feature length film being 4000 feet in length, or about 60 minutes. It was recorded in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register as being the first feature length film using the guide set by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute that a feature film is any film longer than 40 minutes, and that it was one continuous film shown in one seating. The American film, Les Miserables was released in 1909 also as four short movies on four reels and shown reel by reel, over several months. But this movie as a whole was longer again than "The Story of the Kelly Gang".

[@davidbanan.]

"the epic drama of 8 reels" LAUL, LOL BIG

[@ikechianyanwu8993]

I really enjoyed that last pause before revealing Quo Vadis' clearly lasting influence on today's average film length.

[@mp2802]

The mix of normal and bolder letters was so unsettling

[@edmundironside9435]

Quo Vadis may have been the first 2 hour film, but there were already films before that that had long runtimes: The Story of the Kelly Gang (Tait, 1906) was an hour long and considered the first feature length film, Defence of Sevastopol was over 90 minutes long (Vasili Goncharov, 1911, 100m mins). In the same year that Quo Vadis came out there were longer films being made as well (though I do not not the exact date they were made so I cannot say if they were released before or after the Italian epic): Fantomas clocked in at a total runtime of 337 minutes (though it was released in 5 separate episodes, making it more of a film series) and Germinal; or, The Toll of Labor (Capellani, 1913) had a total runtime of 150 minutes, making it the longest film up to that point in time. Also the first full length American movie wasn't by Griffith, it was by Sidney Olcott - From the Manger to the Cross (1912, 71 mins).

[@milnrowoafc]

An episode on the rise of spaghetti westerns and the success of Cinecitta in Rome,Italy after WW2

[@davidthewhale7556]

I love this era of cinema, before the Disney monopoly before cinema was even a business. Also because it was silent it was just like art or music, it transcended the language barrier and anyone of any language could understand it. It’s just so sad

[@ivanterrible7362]

Agree. The concept of film as a visual medium has been lost. The "Car chase/gun fight/explosion" formula doesn't work without the potential for hearing loss. My personal favorite film is Chaplin's "City Lights (a romantic comedy in pantomime)" While it didn't incorporate sound effects, they were mostly played on kazoo to further demonstrate how unnecessary sound was in film. Yet another example of Chaplin's brilliance as a film maker.

[@balmainrichard1335]

Can y'all also explain what movie was first rated PG? I really wanna know

[@Achill101]

Google for Hollywood code and rating system.

[@mikedoyle9227]

Cleopatra (1912) Directed by Charles L. Gaskill was a US film release that ran 88 minutes on 6 reels and came out before Quo Vadis (1913).

[@HlumeloNdoni]

Could Death Stranding be a newer form of "interactive movie" thats now 40 hours lol

[@shawnhall3849]

Hlumelo Ndoni The “Interactive movie” video game has been around

[@hagen4264]

true

[@DavidVargasColombia]

I think another interesting topic the video touched on, if ever so slightly, is patent law and its effect on innovation. Strong patent protections do drive innovation by securing earnings to its developers..... but excessively robust laws can become detrimental as well; we are currently seeing this with Disney....

[@daveotuwa5596]

3:31 where the high school Dianna Cowern graduated from before launching PhysicsGirl the channel to become the PhysicsGirl, likely to be her native hometown (birthplace)