The standard measurement for determining what is a feature film is between at minimum 40 to 60 minutes long. Otherwise, movies less than that are considered a "short."
Debate rages on what was the first feature film in cinematic history. We earlier saw the Australian 1906 movie "The Story of The Kelly Gang" clock in a just over 60 minutes. But the film was seen solely in Australia at the time. Just a 14 minute fragment remains. Cinema's first true international feature film was Italy's "L'Inferno." At 68 minutes in length, the March 1911 movie meets the qualification of length as well as exposure to a world-wide audience and the fact the entire film exists today for viewing.
Three Italian directors took almost three years of laborious work to produce this take on Dante's Nine Circles of Hell, the Inferno, which is the opening book to his "Divine Comedy." The movie was a huge hit, earning over $2 million in the United States alone. Because of its length and its popularity, theater owners, many who owned smaller nickelodeons that still dominated the movie landscape, would raise the price of admission to customers lining up to see it. The movie itself is one of the most surreal films in the canon of cinema. Even today "L'Inferno" mesmerizes viewers with its strange atmosphere of human souls living a sordid life of punishment that will last for eternity. One scene has numerous persons buried up to their necks, with just their heads above ground. Tough way to spend eternity. The look of the movie was inspired by the mid-1800's work of painter Gustave Dore and his series on The Divine Comedy. The directors used many special effects in play in early cinema, presenting numerous weird aesthetics. Split screen, scaling depth perception and double exposures make the underworld appear so much more foreign to us living above ground. The highlight is the Devil eating history's two most notorious traitors, Brutus and Cassius.
Debate rages on what was the first feature film in cinematic history. We earlier saw the Australian 1906 movie "The Story of The Kelly Gang" clock in a just over 60 minutes. But the film was seen solely in Australia at the time. Just a 14 minute fragment remains. Cinema's first true international feature film was Italy's "L'Inferno." At 68 minutes in length, the March 1911 movie meets the qualification of length as well as exposure to a world-wide audience and the fact the entire film exists today for viewing.
Three Italian directors took almost three years of laborious work to produce this take on Dante's Nine Circles of Hell, the Inferno, which is the opening book to his "Divine Comedy." The movie was a huge hit, earning over $2 million in the United States alone. Because of its length and its popularity, theater owners, many who owned smaller nickelodeons that still dominated the movie landscape, would raise the price of admission to customers lining up to see it. The movie itself is one of the most surreal films in the canon of cinema. Even today "L'Inferno" mesmerizes viewers with its strange atmosphere of human souls living a sordid life of punishment that will last for eternity. One scene has numerous persons buried up to their necks, with just their heads above ground. Tough way to spend eternity. The look of the movie was inspired by the mid-1800's work of painter Gustave Dore and his series on The Divine Comedy. The directors used many special effects in play in early cinema, presenting numerous weird aesthetics. Split screen, scaling depth perception and double exposures make the underworld appear so much more foreign to us living above ground. The highlight is the Devil eating history's two most notorious traitors, Brutus and Cassius.