What is the longest movie ever made?
A lengthy movie can be a true work of art, encompassing all the reasons cinema fans want to watch the medium in the first place. In stark contrast, a long film can also be a complete slog, making many wonder why on earth the director didn’t decide to be more frivolous when it came to making the final cut.
There have been some true masterpieces that clock in with an impressive run time, say Ben-Hur at three hours and 23 minutes, The Godfather Part II at three hours and 20 minutes, or Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet at four hours and two minutes. The same cannot be said for James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, which comes in at an incredibly boring three hours and 12 minutes.
But when it comes to the longest movie ever made in cinema history so far, there looks to be only one winner. As verified by the Guinness Book of World Records, the film with the longest runtime is the 1977 American movie The Cure for Insomnia, directed by John Henry Timmis IV.
The Cure for Insomnia clocks in at a staggering 5,220 minutes, which equates to either 87 hours or three days and 15 hours. The film does not actually contain a plot but is rather a lengthy feature of the artist L.D. Groban reading a poem that shares the same title as Timmis’ movie.
Groban’s poem comes in at 4,080 pages long, so it’s easy to see why more than 80 hours were spent recording it all. In fact, the production for The Cure for Insomnia took three and a half days just to film, and the final product features Groban’s recital cut together with clips from heavy metal music and pornography videos.
Now, it would have been one hell of a feat to actually screen the film, let alone make it, but it was shown in full between January 31st and February 3rd, 1987, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. Even more impressive would have to have the film arrive on physical media.
However, a DVD or VHS pressing was too much to ask, considering the film’s insane length, and at present, all copies of the original print have been lost. There don’t seem to be too many people who’ve actually watched the film either, as on IMDb, there are only two reviews.
The first arrived in 2002 and is a genuine review of the movie, and the other is a passage of grievance after L.D. Groban passed away. There are just 11 reviews of the film on Google, but of course, it’s difficult to actually verify whether or not such posters have indeed seen Timmis’ work. If they did manage to catch the lot without falling asleep, then they deserve all the plaudits in the world, making the title of the film all the more apt.
