Cannes Film Festival’s lengthy standing ovations: Genuine praise or tedious wrist exercise?
The Cannes Film Festival is notorious for its lengthy standing ovations. Its tradition for audience members to stand and clap for long periods as a show of good faith to the cast and crew who attended the screening. But does the length of applause correspond to a film’s quality? Yahoo Entertainment Reporter Kelsey Weekman investigates.
Video Transcript
Every year at Cannes Film Festival.
An absurd number of movies get wildly long standing ovations.
Surely these movies are not all that good, right?
The short answer is no, we did some math with the data we could find on can ovations of yesteryear.
And there's no direct correlation between the length of applause and how well those movies go on to perform.
Sure, in aggregate movies with long ovations tend to be well received in turn a profit like Pan's Labyrinth with a 22 minute ovation and Top Gun Maverick, which got just five minutes.
But there are also some notable whoppers like the neon demon, 17 minutes, the Paper Boy, 15 minutes and a whole 10 minutes for the beaver, a film in which Mel Gibson acts opposite himself as a hand puppet.
No, I'm the beaver.
And if anything that's got to be more awkward for the filmmakers, right?
Regardless, it's crazy to clap for 22 minutes straight or to be clapped at for 22 minutes straight.
Miss me with that.
