Of course, not all Best Picture winners tip the scale. Some are of a perfectly decent length. As mentioned, “Marty” is the shortest Best Picture winner, but 1977’s “Annie Hall” only runs 93 minutes. F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,” one of two films to win Best Picture at the first Academy Awards in 1927, is only 94 minutes long, and golly is it worth every minute. 

Also jaunty is “Driving Miss Daisy,” which closes after 99 minutes. The 1929 revue film “The Broadway Melody” is a brisk 100, which is tied with the unexpected 2011 Best Picture winner, “The Artist.” All under about 110 minutes are “In the Heat of the Night,” “On the Waterfront,” “Nomadland,” “Casablanca,” “It Happened One Night,” “The Lost Weekend,” and “Kramer vs. Kramer.” As one can see, these measures of length are mere intellectual gauges. Length is rarely a mark of quality. 

When we include Best Picture nominees, however, there are so brisk-ass movies in the mix. The Mae West vehicle “She Done Him Wrong” was nominated for Best Picture in 1934, and it speeds by at 65 minutes. The excellent 1945 anti-Western “The Ox-Bow Incident” tops out at 77 minutes, and the whimsical musical comedy “One Hour with You,” starring Maurice Chevalier, only runs 78. 

Most of the shortest Best Picture nominees come from the 1930s when films, in general, ran shorter. “One Hundred Men and a Girl” (1938) is 81 minutes, 1930’s “The Divorcee” (starring my fake movie star girlfriend Norma Shearer) is only 82, and it’s tied in length with 1932’s  “Shanghai Express.”

Of course, the shortest film ever nominated for an Academy Award remains the 2012 animated film “Fresh Guacamole,” by PES. That film is 104 seconds. Meanwhile, the longest film ever nominated for an Oscar is the documentary “O.J.: Made in America,” which runs 467 minutes.