At last year’s Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer picked up the Best Picture Award. Clocking a running time of 180 minutes from start to finish, Oppenheimer was one of the longest movies to win an Oscar but by no means the longest.

In the 96 editions of the Academy Award ceremony, a total of 12 films with runtimes of over three hours and 29 which have exceeded two and a half hours have picked up the Best Picture prize.

Epic movies nominated at the 1957 Oscars

And many others have been nominated. The trend for epic films began in the postwar years, when theater goers had the patience to sit through lengthy productions. Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 movie The Ten Commandments ran for an uncomfortably long 220 minutes - one of two three-hour films nominated at the 29th Academy Awards. The other was Giant starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean which clocked 201 minutes. Neither won Best Motion Picture but Stevens did pick up the Best Director award.

Other near misses include: The Alamo (1960: 202 minutes), Doctor Zhivago (1965: 200 minutes), The Sand Pebbles (1966: 196 minutes) and The Irishman (2019: 209 minutes) and Flowers Of The Killing Moon (2023: 206 minutes) - all nominated but failed to take home the big prize.

What is the longest movie to have won an Oscar?

It’s a close contest but the winner is the 1939 historical romance Gone with the Wind with memorable performances from Clark Gable, Vivian Leigh, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland.

It set a record for the most nominations (13) and wins - eight at the 12th Awards ceremony, including Outstanding Production and Best Directing with Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara winning Best Actress and Hattie McDaniel receiving the Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Sitting though Gone with the Wind from the opening scenes to the closing credits takes just under four hours (238 minutes) - few cinema-goers have the stamina to do that today. It also made history as the first color movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture.

Coming a close second is David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece Lawrence Of Arabia, with Peter O’Toole cast as T. E. Lawrence which runs for 228 minutes.

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