Does The Length Of a Festival Standing Ovation Really Matter?
When Pedro Almodóvar’s philosophical drama The Room Next Door made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 2, headlines in publications ranging from People to The Independent focused on the length of its post-screening standing ovation — a whopping 17.5 minutes, the longest ever recorded at the gathering.
Surely, this enthusiastic reception means the Julianne Moore-Tilda Swinton picture is bound for 2025 Oscar glory, right?
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Not so fast.
While attendees at such European festivals as Cannes and Venice in recent years have made a social media-fueled sport of clocking and breathlessly reporting ovation times, their significance back in the real world has always seemed … less clear.
So THR set about finding out. We crunched the numbers of some of the biggest (and not-so-biggest) applause-getters in recent years. What we found was revealing.
It turns out correlations get very shaky when comparing the tastes of enthused festival crowds with thousands of Academy voters. But there are some patterns.
Truncated clapping — anything 10 minutes or shorter — yields mixed results. Sometimes a movie can go all the way to best picture, like The Shape of Water did in 2018 after its seven-minute applause sesh. Sometimes a film never even gets out of the starting gate (sorry, Ad Astra).
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, a film with ridiculously sustained ovations (14 minutes or longer) surprisingly almost never manages to translate that euphoria into Oscar nominations. In fact, all that applause is often the result of a more external variable, such as the audience in Cannes supporting Michael Moore’s anti-George W. Bush stance at the premiere of his Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004.
The clapping sweet spot? It lies somewhere between the 11- and 13-minute mark. That’s enough time to suggest sincere appreciation from fans without tipping into overtly reflexive adoration. This is the range, for instance, where big nominees like Inglourious Basterds, Elvis and the best picture-winning The Artist landed. You want to be at this length for your festival movie.
THR examines how nominations correlate to movies at different average applause lengths, using a sample size of 25 of the biggest fest premieres in recent years.
This story first appeared in a November stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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