The cure for insomnia
In the latest in his series on striking images, our columnist looks at some of the most sleep-inducing films
THAT is the title of an 87hour film that consists entirely of a gentleman reading a 4,080-page poem. But it was trumped as the remedy to sleep deprivation by the 837-hour running time of Logistics, which traces in exquisite detail the passage of a crate being sent by sea from a factory in Stockholm, Sweden to another factory in Boa’an, China.
Logistics may not rival The Bourne Ultimatum for pace, Citizen Kane for groundbreaking cinematography or Gone with the Wind for romance and spectacle. It does, however, impress upon viewers, even if you only tune in to the film-maker’s website for just a few minutes, the monolithic nature and sheer physicality of getting products from factory to market.
We are now so distanced from the manufacture and distribution process that contemporary life can appear to be constructed around instantaneous purchases of plentiful goods made readily available on the internet.
In reality, materialism is far more material.
The world is ringed with shipping lanes saturated with mammoth freighters ploughing their way from coast to coast. The largest of these giant ships was recently launched, in a competitive race to build everbigger transport vessels that will move everything from cars to camcorders across the world from producer to buyer.
The aptly named current prizeholder is Oscar, a hulking behemoth a quarter-of-a-mile long, the equivalent of four football pitches.
It can carry 19,200 containers and is far larger than any passenger superliner or aircraft carrier ever built — in fact, it is the biggest manmade object to have ever moved across the planet.
What most of the world’s lengthiest films have in common is that they are art films in the true sense — they were made for display in a gallery or exhibition context rather than in a cinema on general release.
In 1964 Andy Warhol made Empire, eight hours and five minutes of silent black-and-white footage of the Empire State Building, from a direct, fixed viewpoint. Abridged showings were never allowed and supposedly the very unwatchability of the film was an important part of its creation.
A year earlier Warhol had exhibited Sleep, again a black-and-white silent movie shot from one single perspective of a man sleeping for five hours and 21 minutes. I am sure it was more entertaining that Adam Sandler’s wearily unfunny 50 First Dates.
Christian Marclay’s wonderful The Clock (2010) comprises thousands of very short clips from movies of all kinds, each containing a visual reference to every minute of a 24-hour period, each acting as an internal timekeeper for the film. Similar in its appropriation of existing footage is Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho (1993), in which the artist slowed down Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic thriller to two frames a second, making the film last a full 24 hours.
Clocking in at an impressive three hours and 12 minutes is the 1963 epic Cleopatra. Starring the cream of acting talent of the day, headed by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the film cost $44 million to make (equivalent to well over $300 million today) and in real terms remains the most expensive film ever.
It nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox after lacklustre box office returns. Filming began in London but because Elizabeth Taylor fell ill production moved to Rome, where she felt she could recover in finer weather.
The sets left in Britain were put to good use for the slap-and-tickle comedy Carry on Cleo, a film more widely revered by sophisticated moviegoers.