Recently, I have been in the mood to watch old movies. Even though most of them have normal running time, there are quite a few of them that are double the time of a regular movie.

One of my favorite old movies is My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, but the length of the movie is 2 hours and 55 minutes. Another familiar favorite that I have recently rewatched is Gone with the Wind starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable but it was a bit harder for me to get through this one because of the 4 hour running time.

What I usually do with long movies is that I take a break and I do not rush to finish it in one night. What I did with Gone with the Wind was that I divided it into different parts so it took me a few nights to finish the movie.

During the whole time that I was watching these two movies I was thinking about how hard it must have been for the people who had to watch these movies at a theater but what I also noticed was that both of these movies had an intermission. Even though both of these movies had an intermission they still seemed so long, let alone if they didn’t have any.

Sadly, this problem not only didn’t get solved as time has passed but it has gotten worse. Today, there is no intermission for the movies we see in theaters so imagine how it would be if you had to go to see a movie as long as My Fair Lady or Gone with the Wind. Both of these movies are listed among the 100 best movies of all time yet the viewer might get bored or fall asleep if they watch these movies without an intermission.

According to the internet the reason intermissions are no longer part of the movies is because the theaters want to fit more movies into the schedule at the movie theater. According to an article called : “What Happened to the Movie Intermission?” by Nathan Hartman, the author goes over what happened to movie intermissions and how over time making money became a bigger priority than people getting a break during movies. I believe, if a movie is good but has a long running time, having an intermission will guarantee a bigger box office because people would not have to worry about getting bored or falling asleep during the movie.