The truth behind those absolutely crazy 20-minute film festival ovations-Tori Brazier at Venice Film Festival-Entertainment – Metro

Standing ovations have become a must at film festivals (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

With a quite frankly crazy near-20-minute incident, things may have gotten a little out of hand at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

But every year we do it, without fail, even though fans and critics moan about it and it’s quite clearly a reductive way of measuring a movie’s impact.

However, we simply just can’t seem to help ourselves in timing and then reporting on the length of standing ovations at prestigious film festivals.

This year film fans around the world were obsessing over the eight, nine, 10-minute-long Cannes standing ovations for the likes of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, young Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice and Horizon: An American Saga.

And as Venice begins to wrap up for another year, people’s enthusiasm appears to know no bounds with a 13-minute ovation for critics’ darling The Brutalist, a whopping 17 to 18 minutes and 36 seconds (depending on whose stopwatch you go by) for Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door – and even 11 minutes for Joker: Folie à Deux, despite its decidedly mixed reviews.

It’s the biggest con in cinema-going, but each festival (with Venice appearing to give usual biggest proponent Cannes a run for its money this year) every major film being shown has it’s rapturous (or sometimes, just polite) applause monitored from its premiere.

Cannes Film Festival has become known for its standing ovations and how generously they are given out at each of the event’s premieres (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door received nearly 20 minutes of applause (Picture: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

Even if you’ve never been in Cannes’ 2,000-plus-seater Grand Théâtre Lumière on the Croisette, where each premiere is held after the stars and filmmakers ascend those famous, red-carpeted stairs, or among the slightly more intimate 1,032 seats of the Sala Grande at Venice it must seem a slightly odd if not antiquated measure of success.

True, applause is both welcome and expected as a traditional measure of appreciation – but to predict a film’s entire box office run and reception from a wide audience on this one screening alone, usually ranking them in duration order like an Oscars haul? Bizarre.

And as anyone can tell you who has been there as it happens… it’s totally meaningless.

‘Once again media report #Cannes standing ovation times like sports scores while I scream at my phone “THEY DON’T MEAN ANYTHING!”,’ complained Jessica Fenton on X earlier this year, pointing out that ‘the last Indiana Jones got a 5min SO’ in 2023 before it went on to flop.

Producer Cassian Elwes observed: ‘If you’ve ever been in Cannes you know that literally every movie receives a standing ovation even The Brown Bunny (which was widely panned after). The French cinephiles on the Croisette are an enthusiastic group.’

Or, as director and film fan Luca joked on the social platform after Francis Ford Coppola’s divisive comeback movie Megalopolis nabbed a standing ovation peppered with boos: ‘Every film gets a 7-minute standing ovation at Cannes… it takes a true work of art to get actual boos.’

Megalopolis managed a seven-minute standing ovation, but how much of that was due to it being Francis Ford Coppola’s comeback? (L, pictured with the film’s actors Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza)(Picture: Getty)

And that’s exactly how it is at Venice too, given it’s rare to hear of anything below five minutes.

It’s also quite unusual for all publications to agree on exactly how long each standing ovation was, possibly because they start counting the minutes at different markers. Is it when the credits begin to roll and the applause first starts, or is it when the lights go up or the first person gets to their feet – or once the whole auditorium is standing?

For reference, The Hollywood Reporter reveals that its reporters ‘start the clock the moment people jump to their feet – usually after the house lights come up – and stop when most people begin to sit down or when the film’s director is given the mic since the crowd stops clapping to listen’.

This is how we got the variety in the reported length of The Room Next Door’s standing ovation, which was certainly helped along by its stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore stepping forward to join in themselves, encouraging others to keep going, along with the enormous popularity of filmmaker Almodovar.

In fact, even as he disembarked from his vaperetto to attend the film’s photo call and press conference, ahead of the film being shown publically, a frenzied chorus of ‘Pedro! Pedro! Pedro!’ began. This returned with a vengeance later in the Sala Grande.

Actor and director Kevin Costner’s passion project, the first film (of four, he hopes) in his Horizon: An American Saga series, was an example of the different interpretations of standing ovation at Cannes, even after its pretty brutal reviews.

Some of the sprawling cast of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 joined director Kevin Costner (C) at the movie’s Cannes premiere (Picture: Marc Piasecki/FilmMagic)

The film’s reports of a standing ovation ranged between seven and 11 minutes (Picture: Warner Bros. Pictures via AFP)

Variety estimated this standing ovation as seven minutes, while Deadline went for 11 minutes and People magazine thought it was 10.

All of these sounds like wild approval and excitement over what’s just been shown, but it didn’t stop Chapter 1 from performing so poorly at the box office in June that Chapter 2’s planned cinematic release in August was hastily axed. Instead, it was invited to Venice and will show here as one of the closing films, giving Costner – who has self-financed the project to the tune of millions too and is busy filming Chapter 3 – another chance to whip up some fan enthusiasm and financial backing.

Like Coppola’s Megalopolis, which others had at closer to a 10-minute ovation, it’s likely a large chunk of that clapping was just for the respective filmmakers’ dedication, passion and millions of their own dollars that was poured into realising those cinematic dreams.

There was also some disagreement over which film has received the longest ovation this year at Cannes between genre-blending crime musical Emilia Pérez and Demi Moore’s bonkers and bloody body horror The Substance, both of which might have clocked in at 13 minutes. Or maybe got nine minutes – or 11?

The Room Next Door reportedly broke records for it’s ovation (Picture: AP)

At Venice, The Room Next Door was a much clearer front-runner – as well as a reported record breaker at the festival for the longest-standing ovation ever, a claim which the film’s publicity team was only too happy to splash across its Instagram alongside videos of its overwhelmed director and actresses.

But almost every film receives a standing ovation at its Cannes or Venice premiere out of politeness, to celebrate the achievement of screening at the prestigious festival, and the occasion as a whole – after all, everyone is in evening wear and in one of the most famous cinemas in the world.

The Americans in particular are obsessed too with what they see as the stamp of quality approval and taste that comes with European recognition.

As mentioned previously though, there are easy ways to manipulate the length of an ovation, as directors are often given the microphone to speak at some point, as mentioned above.

‘Thank you, this is really lovely, but I really want to go and party right now,’ said filmmaker Andrea Arnold at the Cannes premiere of Bird, starring Barry Keoghan, which wouldn’t exactly encourage the ovation (seven minutes in this case) to continue.

Emilia Pérez has received one of Cannes 2024’s longest-standing ovations at (maybe) 13 minutes (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

Joker: Folie A Deux was hot on it’s tails at Venice with 11 minutes (Picture: Warner Bros / BACKGRID)

Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage was whipping everyone up into a frenzy back in May by roaring ‘Mangez le rat!’ (his newest meme-worthy line, translated for the French audience) into the mic at the official screening for his latest film this year, The Surfer, (which made six minutes) and encouraging the audience to yell the name of the film in unison.

There’s an official camera capturing every moment of the ovation and the cast and crew’s reaction, with each star getting their own close-up at Cannes – so if you bring along a large cast (for example, Megalopolis), you’re already winning as it takes forever to make it down the line.

If you’re making some sort of comeback, festivals are often especially appreciative too (for example, legendary director Coppola with Megalopolis).

Johnny Depp also got a warm reception (seven-minute standing ovation) for his new film Jeanne du Barry at Cannes in 2023, with festival director Thierry Frémaux welcoming back the controversial figure with open arms after his legal troubles of the past few years.

Was the applause to do exclusively with the ground-breaking or exceptional quality of Maïwenn’s film in this instance? Absolutely not.

Back to Almodovar at Venice this year, and there was also appreciation for this being his first English-language film at the age of 74 – something which he saw as an adventure into a ‘new genre’. Its topic of euthanasia also got a lot of support, with Almodovar making an impassioned plea for its legalisation worldwide.

So as you can now see, there’s a lot of unheard context that goes into these clapping marathons. A standing ovation is not a reliable indication of a film’s critical reception or quality – or how it will be received widely when in cinemas or streaming across the world.

When it comes to the longest standing ovation on record though, Cannes is far ahead of Venice. There, it belongs to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006, where the audience clapped (or slogged?) it out for a palm-punishing 22 minutes.

Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro at Cannes in 2006, where his film clocked the longest-ever recorded standing ovation (Picture: Getty)

That film’s quality is undeniable, as is that of Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which earned a 20-minute Cannes ovation, the second longest.

However, Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon got 17 minutes in 2016 – while also inspiring walkouts – before tanking at the box office amid mixed reviews.

And remember The Paperboy, Lee Daniels’ 2012 film where Nicole Kidman urinates on Zac Efron? No, probably not – and it made back less than a third of its budget. However, it got a chunky Cannes standing ovation at 15 minutes.

So although this tradition won’t be ending anytime soon, just know that every film festival standing ovation should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

 This article was first published on May 23, 2024.

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