Because of the absurd primacy given to Griffith's Birth of a Nation, it was long customary to pretend that full-length films were extremely uncommon before 1915. In fact of course, as more and more silent films become available, this has been shown to be completely false. By 1914, not only were all European countries turning out plenty of full-length feature but Japan, China, India and Latin America had all produced features at least of medium length (around 40 mins). In the US, the MPPC, sometimes known as the Edison Trust, spearheaded by Edison and Biograph, had done its damndest to stem the tide but not in fact with any marked success because the majority of companies no longer accepted its hegemony.
So in 1914 there were such films as Joseph in the Land of Egypt, Cinderella, Home Sweet Home (Griffith for Majestic), The Wrath of the Gods, Rip Van Winkle, The Wishing Ring, Martin Eden, Tillie's Punctured Romance, A Florida Enchantment, The Sign of the Cross. Many more films run about 40-45 minutes and I am sure the list could be extended and will be extended as more and more other features are "rediscovered" and restored. The question of running time (in minutes) is a bit illusory because it depends very much on running speed and the way the restoration of the film has been put together (credits, length of time allowed for intertitles etc). So a film that in its current runs 50 mins and another that runs 80 mins may in fact be pretty much the same length. The original films themselves varied considerably in how they dealt with peripheral or incidental material. In the case of this film, a very leisurely six or seven minutes to the visual introduction of all the characters, a common enough practice but rarely quite so extended.
Most of the early full-length features relied on traditional material and many were westerns, generally westerns of a certain literary turn - so absent from the list above, just in 1914, there was The Call of the North, The Squaw Mam (DeMille's first go at it), The Virginian, Te Bargain (William Hart's first feature) and The Spoilers as well as Salomy Jane. So there is nothing whatever exceptional about this film either in terms of its length or its content.
The quality of US features was still rather poor. Tourneur's The Wishing Ring is the only one that can bear comparison with Cabiria (Italy) or The Mysterious X (Denmark)or Mute Witnesses and The Child of the Big City(Russia) or Engelein (Germany) or La Fille de Delft (France/Belgium) or Le Roman d'un Mousse (France).
So in 1914 there were such films as Joseph in the Land of Egypt, Cinderella, Home Sweet Home (Griffith for Majestic), The Wrath of the Gods, Rip Van Winkle, The Wishing Ring, Martin Eden, Tillie's Punctured Romance, A Florida Enchantment, The Sign of the Cross. Many more films run about 40-45 minutes and I am sure the list could be extended and will be extended as more and more other features are "rediscovered" and restored. The question of running time (in minutes) is a bit illusory because it depends very much on running speed and the way the restoration of the film has been put together (credits, length of time allowed for intertitles etc). So a film that in its current runs 50 mins and another that runs 80 mins may in fact be pretty much the same length. The original films themselves varied considerably in how they dealt with peripheral or incidental material. In the case of this film, a very leisurely six or seven minutes to the visual introduction of all the characters, a common enough practice but rarely quite so extended.
Most of the early full-length features relied on traditional material and many were westerns, generally westerns of a certain literary turn - so absent from the list above, just in 1914, there was The Call of the North, The Squaw Mam (DeMille's first go at it), The Virginian, Te Bargain (William Hart's first feature) and The Spoilers as well as Salomy Jane. So there is nothing whatever exceptional about this film either in terms of its length or its content.
The quality of US features was still rather poor. Tourneur's The Wishing Ring is the only one that can bear comparison with Cabiria (Italy) or The Mysterious X (Denmark)or Mute Witnesses and The Child of the Big City(Russia) or Engelein (Germany) or La Fille de Delft (France/Belgium) or Le Roman d'un Mousse (France).