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March 28, 2024, 07:59:39 PM

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The Great 4 hour Films.

Started by rjd2, March 18, 2021, 10:46:18 PM

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Chedney Honks

That's a really interesting point, and I agree. Long films with long shots are much more palatable to me.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: lipsink on March 19, 2021, 10:31:11 PM
That Bertolucci film '1900' with DeNiro and GGérard Depardieu is 5 hours long (but there's different versions of it). I've never seen it but Morricone does the score. Isn't it meant to be great?

Apparently. I have it, although I've read that it features scenes involving a young boy being gang raped, frogs being tortured, a real pig being butchered, and a cat being strung up which Donald Sutherland then headbutts to death, so I'm not in a massive hurry to watch it.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: chveik on March 19, 2021, 12:50:41 AM
Penance? Happy Hour?

Looking at Mubi (which is where I saw it) I'm fairly confident it's the latter.

edit: checked viewing history and it is.

weaseldust

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on March 20, 2021, 12:34:23 PM
Apparently. I have it, although I've read that it features scenes involving a young boy being gang raped, frogs being tortured, a real pig being butchered, and a cat being strung up which Donald Sutherland then headbutts to death, so I'm not in a massive hurry to watch it.

ugh it's a shame, i started to watch this film and was really enjoying it but then some children started casually impaling frogs on sticks and i just said 'nope'. there's a lot of animal cruelty in films from the 70s it seems...


anyway, no one has mentioned greed (1924) yet, so, greed

NoSleep

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on March 19, 2021, 12:14:59 AM
Once Upon A Time In America is pushing four hours (over four if you count the extended cut) and it's the film that first comes to mind when people ask that tricky "what's your favourite film?" question.

Yeah. Never mind being such a long film, it's one of the greatest.

notjosh

Came in to recommend Dr Mabuse - a superb thriller. Have seen it several times and not been bored once. There's an intermission point in the middle so it can easily be watched in 2 parts, in fact that's how it was originally screened. The link above looks like it's from the recent bluray, with an excellent score.

sevendaughters

Satantango is 7hr and change. I watched it in 3 parts on New Year's Day and was captured by it. I read the book after, expecting another long trial, and found it quite compact and the level of descriptiveness stands in for the passage of time in the film. Sure it could have been shorter, but sometimes if you have a good feeling going then why not explore it.

West of the Tracks by Wang Bing is a 9hr documentary about dilapidated and rusted Chinese industrial cities. Well worth anyone's time. The duration gives weight to the physical scale of what is being shown. I haven't seen his similarly-long Dead Souls, which does for Chinese labour camp survivors what Shoah does for Holocaust survivors, because I'm too sensitive for that type of thing right now.

I've seen Peter Watkins' La Commune, which has screened as a 6hr+ single film, but I opted to watch it in parts. It's not his best work but incredibly committed. His 3hr film on Edvard Munch is better. I haven't got the energy for his 15hr collaborative piece about anti-nuclear resistance (The Journey) nor his 5hr film about August Strindberg. His best film is 69 minutes and made for telly. Someone should remind him.

Chedney Honks

I have Kobayashi's The Human Condition sitting there waiting for the day. Supposed to be amazing. Nine hours. I love Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom and some other stuff, so I'm really looking forward but just don't have the time to do it.

Keebleman

Quote from: lipsink on March 19, 2021, 10:31:11 PM
That Bertolucci film '1900' with DeNiro and GGérard Depardieu is 5 hours long (but there's different versions of it). I've never seen it but Morricone does the score. Isn't it meant to be great?

I didn't like it at all.  Even the most modest movie can create a world and characters the viewer comes to feel he knows intimately.  This 300 minute behemoth is populated by characters you never get to know in contexts you never understand.  The dubbing doesn't help either.  Only the various startling excesses, including the aforementioned animal cruelty but also on-screen paedophilia involving Burt Lancaster (not as the child), hold the interest, provided you're not totally repulsed.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: sevendaughters on March 20, 2021, 07:14:25 PM
Satantango is 7hr and change. I watched it in 3 parts on New Year's Day and was captured by it. I read the book after, expecting another long trial, and found it quite compact and the level of descriptiveness stands in for the passage of time in the film. Sure it could have been shorter, but sometimes if you have a good feeling going then why not explore it.

West of the Tracks by Wang Bing is a 9hr documentary about dilapidated and rusted Chinese industrial cities. Well worth anyone's time. The duration gives weight to the physical scale of what is being shown. I haven't seen his similarly-long Dead Souls, which does for Chinese labour camp survivors what Shoah does for Holocaust survivors, because I'm too sensitive for that type of thing right now.

I've seen Peter Watkins' La Commune, which has screened as a 6hr+ single film, but I opted to watch it in parts. It's not his best work but incredibly committed. His 3hr film on Edvard Munch is better. I haven't got the energy for his 15hr collaborative piece about anti-nuclear resistance (The Journey) nor his 5hr film about August Strindberg. His best film is 69 minutes and made for telly. Someone should remind him.
Quite a lot of Watkins' stuff is on Youtube, should anyone be interested. I might give it a go soon, I need a new WFH hobby. Shame the Wang Bing movies aren't similarly available.

Sadly not quite qualifying for this thread is "Brain Robbers From Outer Space", clocking in at a whisper under 3 and a half hours. Made for what appears to be no money, and "starring" Conrad Brooks, who had a bit part in "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and gets roles in things like this because he presumably works for free.

I was about to write I've got absolutely no idea why it's almost three times longer than the average Z-grade cheapie; but I'm watching it at the same time as writing this post (it's also available on Youtube) and it immediately becomes apparent. A cop is interviewed from a hospital bed about some as-yet unspecified event, but he haltingly reads off a script a long screed which starts off talking about George Noory and "Coast To Coast AM", then wanders through theosophy, and all the more famous "alternate history" books of the 70s, 80s and 90s (your "Sirius Mystery"s and so on).

The first scene which could generously be called action, and indeed the rest of the movie, is filmed on a cheap camcorder, and if you're a fan of that loud hum that comes from recording with the cheap onboard sound from one of these devices, then you're in luck because it will be your constant companion throughout the entire thing. It would appear they filmed outside the same house as was featured in "Plan 9" briefly too?

I'm 13 minutes in and I'm already bored. Everyone reading this thread could make something better than this without that much effort. I just don't understand why it exists or who thought it would be a good idea, and I'm not sure many people have made it further through than I have (I could only find one, extremely short, review online).

Herbert Ashe

#40
Quote from: C_Larence on March 19, 2021, 09:21:42 PM
Anyone seen La Flor? 15 hours long apparently. It's on my watchlist after I saw some memes about it on instagram recently, but until then I'd never heard of it.

zomgmouse mentioned it upthread, but I'd say watch his Extraordinary Stories first (just 4 hours long) and if you don't like that, I don't think La Flor will work for you. OTOH if you've watched & liked any Raul Ruiz, possibly Rivette films, then maybe give it a go.

I've seen it twice - once at the ICA, once on blu - and my feelings on it range from Yawn (episode 5), Decent (1, 2, 6), to Film of the Decade Contender (3, 4). Luckily for me, 5 is about the shortest part, while 3 & 4 make up something like half (or more) of the total.

Quote from: Chedney Honks on March 20, 2021, 07:30:44 PM
I have Kobayashi's The Human Condition sitting there waiting for the day. Supposed to be amazing. Nine hours. I love Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom and some other stuff, so I'm really looking forward but just don't have the time to do it.

I think The Human Condition was originally released as a trilogy with several month gaps between each part so you don't have to watch it all in one go if you don't want to. It's definitely worth watching, I did for the first time quite recently and loved it.