What is the shortest movie to win ‘Best Picture’?
If you’ve ever sat through a proper epic, something like, I don’t know, let’s say Killers of the Flower Moon or The Brutalist, you’ll be aware of that aching sensation in your lower back that starts to affect you about two hours in, and you need a wee, and no matter how good the film you’re already thinking about your bed.
Well, it’s at that point you wish you could distil an amazing movie down into something more manageable – like one of the shortest movies to win ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars. As many girlfriends have told me, sometimes the best things really do come in small packages, and just because something is really long doesn’t mean it’s more effective. Most film fans are aware that runtimes have been increasing exponentially over the years, with even animated movies for kids that used to just about tick over an hour now usually approaching two.
Most of the Harry Potter films are two and a half hours long. The last Avengers movie went on for three hours, which is ridiculous. It’s time we got back to 90 minutes being the ideal number to sit through. And as we mentioned, there are plenty of examples of films that were superb without hurting your bum too much.
One that stands out is the magnificent wartime drama Casablanca from 1942, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, the endlessly quotable movie that runs to just 102 minutes, during which you get double-crossing, a love triangle, and some of the best dialogue in cinema history.
Another is Kramer vs Kramer, the 1979 parenting drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep that swept the fucking board at the Academy Awards with nine goddamn nominations, winning ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Supporting Actor’. An immensely powerful and relatable piece of cinema, it also has the most realistic portrayal of trying to tell a kid that it can’t have any more ice cream ever put on film. Plus, it only runs to 105 minutes!
Coming in at just one minute shorter is the fantastic The French Connection from 1971, starring the late great Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle, the hard-nosed New York detective with a penchant for chasing trains around in his car in pursuit of French heroin smugglers. A brilliant thriller packed full of action, it’s a movie that shows what a fine actor Roy Scheider was, too, some four years before he did Jaws.
It’s still five minutes longer than Driving Miss Daisy, however, the movie that made Morgan Freeman famous (albeit not as famous as he got when he was in The Shawshank Redemption five years afterwards). Made in 1989, it features Freeman driving an elderly Jessica Tandy around while she reminisces about her life over the past 25 years, and it certainly captured the public’s imagination, earning almost $150million at the box office against a budget of just $7m and earning nine Academy Award nominations, including the sought-after Best Picture.
But the crown for shortest ever ‘Best Picture’ winner goes to a movie from 1955 called Marty, which starred Ernest Borgnine (who would go on to star in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch) and Betsy Blair in the romantic tale of a butcher and a teacher who have both given up on ever finding anyone special but come together at a dance. Borgnine picked up ‘Best Actor’ at the Oscars for his performance, and Delbert Mann also won for ‘Best Director’. Best of all? It’s just fucking 90 minutes long.
