Intermissions in Theatrical Films
The analogs days of yesteryear when movies gave you a 15-minute break to stretch your legs and go to the bathroom
“When is this going to end?” my better half seat-squirmed, checking her silent/dark-mode phone for the umpteenth time, oblivious to the majesty of Timothée Chalamet channeling Bob Dylan on the big screen.
Sure, A Complete Unknown traces the folk troubadour’s life across a four-year period: His first arrival in New York City in 1961 to his controversial, career-changing electrified set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, but . . .
“Does the friggin’ movie have to be as long as his life?” my sometimes-gets-on-my-nerves better half whispers to a sip of her Dr. Pepper. “Who’s Edward Norton supposed to be?”
“Pete Seeger.”
“Who?”
“I told you in the car when “Turn, Turn, Turn” came on the True Oldies Channel. ‘That’s a Pete Seeger song. It’ll be fun to see how Edward Norton portrays him.’”
“I’m going to the bathroom. Do you want anything from the snack bar,” the love of my life swipes her phone, once again, as she fades into the recesses of the theatre dark.
I should have made her pull up a stream of “If I Had a Hammer” by Seeger’s band the Weavers to enjoy. For spite.
All this whisper-hush hub-bub and . . . we haven’t even made it to the intermission: one which director James Mangold made an artistic choice to incorporate into his one hundred forty minute/two hour twenty minute film to conjure the cinema days of yesteryear . . . when “epic films” had intermissions. (His biographical sports drama, Ford vs. Ferrari (2019), clocked at a wee-longer one hundred fifty-two minutes/two hour thirty-two minutes.)
You’d think I was making my baby sit on the couch to watch Martin Scorcese’s three-hour plus western, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), or his equally-long gangster epic, The Irishman (2019), from the streaming comforts of home. Even with the fact we watched each film in two parts with a couple of days break in between: Then, again: I left her to her own devices with the three-hour behemoth that is Avengers: Endgame (2019) because I am no competition for the chest and abs and pearly whites of Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Evans. No, the fact that she’s watching, yet another, James Mangold movie, that he made The Wolverine (2013) and Logan (2017) with her beloved Hugh Jackman, had zero meaning in her social media lifecycle: Bon Jovi and not Bob Dylan: that’s her jam.
Hey, wait a minute . . . there was no intermission in A Complete Unknown. However, with my baby’s (lack of) cinematic tastes for CGI superheroes: even if there was an artistic break . . . it wouldn’t have made a difference: no one died in a hail of bullets or explosions.
So, with that: I attended the art-horror that is Nosferatu (2024)— clocking at a leisurely two hour twelve minutes — alone. My baby’s not a fan of horror films, anyway— not even well-made ones with the mesmerizing Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok and Willem Dafoe as an ersatz Van Helsing. Besides, a pesky film about vampires will cut into her swipe-right TikTok Poshmark time . . . as my going on about the F. W Murnau 1922 original or Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake will only cause a roll of the vision orbs in her head. So, there’s no way — even with an intermission to break its three hour thirty-four minute run time — she’s coming with me to watch Brady Corbet’s multiple award-nominated and winning masterpiece, The Brutalist.
Yes, I am resigned to the fact my baby is an action whore who loves a shirtless Gerard Butler and her apps more than me: ibattle tech for her iheart. Maybe I’ll have better luck when the hair-metal era — her era — is chronicled in that Jon Bon Jovi biographical flick . . . if we’re still together. I cringe at the thought of her breaking out the Aqua Net (and spandex pants, studded leather jacket, and knee-high boots ensemble) for the film premiere, as she did when I took her to see Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.
Oh, no. We’ve turned into my mom and dad . . . only getting ready for rock concerts. I’m doomed.
Back in the analog days of old, before digital streaming and before home video, the only way to enjoy a film was in the cinema. There were no “home theaters” or man cave-movie rooms to order-in a movie on your voice remote or yank out a classic from your personal hard-media collection (there’s still VHS tapes in mine; yeah, audio cassettes in the music collection, too). There were no smart(dumb)televisions with a manufacturer’s prepackaged on-demand plus channel to stream movies.
No, back in the analog days of our celluloid yesteryear: Going to the movies was an “event” analogous to attending a live, Broadway theatre event. The movies were in 70mm widescreen — and that screen was behind a glorious, red velvet curtain soon pulled back, buttressed by Corinthian columns. A musical overture filled the auditorium before the start of the film; then returned at film’s end as you left the theatre. Sometimes attendees had to reserve seats with an advance ticket purchase. You could purchase a souvenir booklet to remember the evening. (While having no intermission: I have fond memories of begging my dad to pay $10 bucks for a Star Wars commemorative booklet.)
Going to the movies was an event that led to your parents calling in a babysitter, your dad putting on a suit and tie, and your mom wearing a dress and heels. And they usually went to dinner before and drinks after. A 1972 episode of U.S television’s NBC Network’s Sanford and Son, comically played off this now lost piece of Americana, as Fred Sanford says, during the intermission to 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof (a one hundred eighty minute/three-hour epic), “You mean there’s more? Oh, I ain’t going back in there,” he tells his son. “The movie’s too long, get some cartoons in here,” he chastises the concessions clerk.
“It’s all about a milkman with an ugly wife and five daughters and he’s always fussin’ at God.”
— Fred Sanford barks the greatest movie logline of all time
In the earliest days of cinema, the intermission was necessary to allow projectionists to change out film reels, due to the length of a movie exceeding the length of a reel’s film stock. In the drive-in arena, the intermission was less mechanical and more financially driven: it boosted concession sales of dry, foiled-wrapped hamburgers and soggy hotdogs between the double features of what became our later DVD-based, seventy-minute trash classics 12-and-50 packaged on hard media retro-shingles such as Mill Creek Entertainment.
While there’s Queen Elizabeth (1912), The Birth of a Nation (1915), and Gone with the Wind (1939) as early intermission-examples, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the intermission was reserved for the two-hour plus epics: the date night events your parents gussied up for and stuck you with your Aunt Martha (who, years later, you discovered wasn’t really your Aunt, just an elderly next door neighbor). Then, by the 1960s, the intermission served a dual purpose: changing out the film reels to thread up the second half of a (long) movie . . . and boosting concession sales.
One could spend a couple of months home-streaming built-in intermission “epic” films: Those regal, Americana cinematic events of yesteryear that ran anywhere between two and a half to four hours with a mean average of three hours. The films were overly-expensive and, if they flopped at the box office (most did, but Hollywood kept making them), it damaged the career of the green-lighting studio executive, the director, and the multiple, A-list stars of the film, alike (classified as “box office poison,” then stuck doing horror films for a paycheck, aka “hagsploitation” and “trollsploitation” films). The spectacle of the film — the sets and costumes — were grandiose to the point of breaking pretentious’ back with the titles The Great Ziegfeld (1936), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Children of Paradise (1945), Seven Samurai (1954), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), El Cid (1961), King of Kings (1961), West Side Story (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Music Man (1962; yes, a two hour-plus musical with dancing), Cleopatra (1963), How the West Was Won (1963), It’s a Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Cheyenne Autumn (1964, the great John Ford’s last western), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964; even with three hours of Sophia Loren to gawk at, it’s a chore), My Fair Lady (1964), Dr. Zhivago (1965), The Great Race (1965), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965; a well-made, yet four hour twenty-minute chore), The Hallelujah Trail (1965; a two hour forty-five minute musical in the Old West), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), The Sound of Music (1965), John Guillermin’s aero-epic, The Blue Max (1966), the James Garner race epic, Grand Prix (1966), Hawaii (1966; two hour forty-two minutes of talking and talking on an island), Khartoum (1966; a mere two hour fourteen minutes), Dr. Doolittle (1967; children tortured for two and a half hours with song and dance), Walt Disney’s The Happiest Millionaire (1967), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Funny Girl (1968), John Sturges’s action epic, Ice Station Zebra (1968), Stanley Kubrick’s game-changer, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Bernard L. Kowalski’s failed epic on-a-budget: Krakatoa, East of Java (1968), Oliver! (1968), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968), Hello, Dolly! (1969), the Clint Eastwood musical, Paint Your Wagon (1969), the war epic, Patton (1970), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971; a three hour British historical import), The Godfather (1972; Coppola wanted one; the studio refused), Godfather Part II (1974; Coppola got his wish), Barry Lyndon (1975; again, Kubrick), and Michael Cimino’s now infamous film idiom, Heaven’s Gate (1980; Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (1995) became “Kevin’s Gate”).
Then there’s John Sturges’s The Great Escape (1963), which intended to have an intermission, but despite its one hundred seventy-two minute/two hour fifty-two minute running time, ran without one. The same holds true for Warren Beatty’s bloated passion-project on Communism, Reds (1981). The forgotten historical drama Gettysburg (1993), running at two hundred fifty-four minutes/four hour fourteen minutes, is noted as the longest film released theatrically by a major studio, New Line Studios, in the United States and, since Ted Turner owned the studio: the limited theatrical release promoted the film’s eventual “mini-series” replay on his cable outlet, TNT; the hard media version’s “intermission” was result of its split on two DVDs. That film’s director, Ronald F. Maxwell, followed up with a second Civil War-based, three hour-plus epic, Gods and Generals (2003); while it had an original run time of five-plus hours, the film was cut by an hour and a half for its 2003 theatrical release; the original cut had a hard media, multi-disc release in 2011. (Today, both of Maxwell’s artworks would have received a better-served, Martin Scorsese Netflix-styled streaming release.)
Courtesy of the advent of the behemothian, 20-plus screened multiplexes (that we almost lost under the threat of 2020 COVID), and good ol’ corporate greed in wanting to fit more screenings into a day (which meant larger box office returns), the final mainstream, wide-release film with an intermission was Sir Richard Attenborough’s three-hour biopic, Gandhi (1982); there were a few exceptions: Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and Franco Zeffirelli’s Mel Gibson-starring Hamlet (1990), both which ran with or without intermissions, depending on the market showing.
Today, the two-hour plus cinematic event pushing three hours is a rarity: it’s a right of passage reserved for the already dues-paying writer-director combos of the Hollywood A-List: James Cameron, Sam Mendes, Christopher Nolan, David O. Russell, and Martin Scorsese. However, as result of advances in film technologies and the industry’s transition from celluloid reels to digital storage: a film can now be longer without the intermission.
While films such as Dances with Wolves (1990), Titanic (1997; Cameron insisted on no intermission), Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Avengers (2012), A Few Good Men (1992), American Hustle (2013), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Hunger Games, and The Wolf of Wall Street (both 2013) are certainly artistic achievements deserving of the indulges of time: there’s no denying those films tried many’s (my baby’s) patience, triggering more-than-once glances at the watch or swipes of the phone, realizing it’s been two hours and there’s still the equivalent of a one-hour television drama series (sans commercials) to go.
“It’s even better the second time.”
“Did they make it longer?”
— Elaine Benes hates the two hour forty-two minute run time of the epic romantic war drama despite her girlfriends loving the movie
Oh, the many who cursed “When is it going to end!” (again, my baby) with Quentin Tarantino’s two hour and forty minute Tinseltown love letter, Once Upon a Time . . . In Hollywood (2019). Ditto those cries for James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) clocking at three hour twelve minutes . . . bellows that date back to Cameron’s Kubrickian space epic, Interstellar (2014), causally strolling the stars at one hundred sixty-nine minutes/two hour forty-nine minutes. Oh, yes: Tarantino did it before with The Hateful Eight (2015), which ran for one hundred eighty seven minutes — complete with a musical overture and an intermission.
Then there’s the ticket prices: they’re higher than ever before. And there’s no intermission. And at those prices (I have to pay for the seat, as well as the actual ticket-for-admission?), getting up for a snack — or a bladder evacuation— isn’t a prudent financial option.
What is this sick, twisted game Hollywood plays with us?
The movies are even longer than in the old intermission-days, the drinks are super-duper sized caffeine-shockers, and there’s no intermission? There’s simply no way to sit through today’s epics without the need of a bathroom break. And you can’t be a piss bottle man in a public theatre.
When Solo: A Star Wars Story, running at meager one hundred thirty-five minutes/two hour fifteen minutes — when compared to the “epics” of the ’60s and ’70s, noted above — wasn’t getting any better by the halfway point, and with a need to urinate — and the bathrooms were all the way down the other end of 28-plex’s behemothian corridor — I did my urinal relief, then walked out of the theater. And since the Disney Worldesque parking shuttles weren’t running upon my walkout — I had to hoof it back to the car. To paraphrase Fred Sanford: “There’s more? Hell, I ain’t walkin’ all the way back down there, then ‘up’ to my seat in the nosebleeds. It’s a shorter walk to the car.”
Since you’re asking: No, my baby wasn’t there: she hates Star Wars in all of its forms with a passion unheralded.
Now, with the stay-at-home streaming age in digital overdrive, an auteur like Martin Scorsese can push the three and a half hour envelope — and skip theaters all together and go straight to the Netflix streaming service. And it’s our paradise: The director can indulge his unfettered artistic desires, the snacks are more bountiful, a better quality (my baby will ask if I want a grilled cheese and Fritos), and cheaper — and we have the option of pause buttons to answer the bladder.
Today, courtesy of the digital-sans-celluloid (I still prefer the scope and depth of 35mm over Reds, but the latter is getting better) cost-effectiveness and ease in which today’s filmmakers can crowdsource and self-produce their visions without studio interference, and with “movie rooms” that we can now set up in our homes courtesy of streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Vudu: not only the “Scorseses” are becoming more ambitious in their narrative scope, so are first-time filmmakers. As they say: “Everyone is ‘Elvis’ on their way up.”
I adore independent film; I love attending film festivals for such films and I always root for the up-against-the-budget filmmakers with a dream and no studio to back their visions. And the streaming-verse — the U.S-based, 20th Century Fox-owned Tubi in particular— is rife with first-time (mostly indie with no indie-studio assist) writers and directors. And some are better than others. For unfettered does not always lead to better (film). And when those films once came down my film-reviewer days’ pipeline, my “review” was not reviewing that film: there’s no positive endgame, in my opinion, in crushing a filmmaker’s passions. I’ll leave that to the Roger Eberts and Rex Reeds of the review-verse because I am a realist: I am not them and I wasn’t writing for The Hollywood Reporter or Variety — not by a long shot.
When it comes to first time or “established” unknown indie filmmakers, I will always err (with notable exceptions) that brevity is best. I believe first timers (with notable skill-set exceptions) are best discovered by way of a more commercially palpable eighty-minute running time, as such lengths became hard-media de rigueur in the DVD ’90s since those indie films on the shelf of your local Blockbuster were cross-distributed into two-hour commercial blocks on cable television (refer to the U.S cable television The Asylum Studios-to-SyFy Channel synergy). But those hard media halcyons of the ’90s are disc-dead in the digital waters.
Today’s burgeoning unknowns can even push beyond a patience-trying ninety-minute mark to test a streamer’s willingness to dedicate their time to an unknown’s work (both filmmakers and the actors employed). Out in those digital wilds on their own, sans a studio’s interference and streaming distributors proliferating the web — complete with their online clarion calls to “fill out our online submission form for your film” — indie filmmakers are free to indulge in their narratives . . . and also unable to separate themselves from the forest to make those hard editing choices to their Canon Red trees.
So, are the editing and unconventional running times of the new crop of two-hour breaking superhero-comic book-sci-fi-gangster epics warranted?
It depends on how much you love your phone. Heaven forbid you should walk with your baby without one — and look into each other’s eyes and talk. The last time I actually looked at my baby’s: they were a hazel-brown mix.
I think.
Additional reading on the art of film with R.D Francis.
