Something Thoughful

  Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.     

                                         WHY DO THEY MAKE THEM SO LONG?

Consider the way films were presented to viewers many years ago. First there would be some “shorts”. Then there might be an interval. Then there would be the main feature. The main feature would usually be about one-and-a-half hours long – in other words about 90 minutes.  In those 90 minutes the detective would have solved the mystery; or the comedians would have had the last laugh; or the good guys would have defeated the bad guys in the city or in the Wild West; or tears had been shed before romance triumphed; or Hammer Horror was giving us the creeps in Transylvania; or there were fantasies in outer space; or even, occasionally, there would be earnest films about injustice and righteousness (The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men etc.). And, if you were lucky, there were foreign films, showing us that the whole world did not revolve round America and England. Bravo those French, Italian, Russian, Japanese  etc. films if you were sophisticated enough to catch them. Having “serials” were strictly for kids, and they had really died out once television had come along. Sure, every so often there would be a long blockbuster film, running to two, three or even more hours – Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, the Russian Ivan the Terrible films and others. But on the whole, feature films remained about 90 minutes long.

But now, films as shown in picture theatres [or, if you prefer, “movie houses” or “the cinema”] are no longer the main medium for entertainment. The picture theatres are still there, though they no longer play “shorts” before the main feature – even though here in New Zealand, we are sometimes tortured by having to watch miles of advertisements before the film begins. And as television has taken over, stories have  become longer and longer. In fact they have often become tediously long.

Item: I genuinely liked most of a recent television series called The Residence, a tongue-in-teeth romp wherein a detective is trying to find out who killed somebody in the White House. All good fun, many interesting eccentric characters  [including the detective] and finally discovering who the murderer was. But here is the problem. The tale was stretched over many episodes… meaning there had to be much padding and repetition, including a whole flashback taking up the detective’s earlier life. To watch the whole thing would take up about seven hours or more.  Years back in movies, a detective film – even a comical one – would have polished off the whole story in about good old 90 minutes.

Now why should this be so? Partly, I suppose, because there are now people who like to “binge” on TV series. Partly because sponsors want to keep watchers on their channel. Partly because its easier to turn on and off a series at your will when you are watching at home. And partly because there is the matter of familiarity. This, I believe, works in situation comedies, where the same comedians turn up like next-door neighbours; but it does not work in anything more serious. Personally, if I want to watch fictitious crime stories on television,  I want to see them resolved in one hour.  I know I will be reminded that ongoing series where written  by the likes of Dickens… but that will lead me into a completely different fugue.