The Iceman Cometh (1973)

At 239 minutes, spread across two discs each with an intermission, this is probably the longest movie I've ever seen. (Don't you believe any list that claims Gone with the Wind is longest.) Add in the basis on a nonmusical play for adults, which usually means mostly talking in a single room, and you know you're gonna need patience. The fame of the title, the unlikelihood of me reading or watching the play, and the desire to challenge myself gave me the courage to sit through it across two nights.

In 1912 New York, the ironically named Harry Hope (Fredric March in his final role) owns a seedy bar/boarding house whose regular patrons/residents are a miserable bunch I wouldn't care to meet. Apparently the first out-of-the-ordinary event on screen is the arrival of a new guy (young Jeff Bridges), who's run into trouble and wants help from a former comrade in the anarchist movement with a death wish, Larry Slade (Robert Ryan, who did die before the film's release). Regardless, bartender Rocky Pioggi (Tom Pedi) and the other patrons look forward to Harry's 60th birthday party that evening, not least for the semiannual visit of their pal Theodore "Hickey" Hickman (Lee Marvin), whose past purportedly funny story about his wife's infidelity with an iceman partly explains the title. But Hickey's not the same man when he arrives. He'll still buy everyone drinks, yet he doesn't feel a need for any himself. He says he's found peace and wants everyone to do the same, by giving up their pipe dreams.

The Big Red One (1980)

I had put this film off, because it runs 162 minutes. How serendipitous that I should get around to it on Memorial Day weekend.

The title's emphasis falls on "One," as in the numeral 1, sported in red by the 1st Infantry Division of the U.S. Army in World War II. Writer-director Sam Fuller was a veteran, which may explain why the narrator, Pvt. Zab (Robert Carradine), says he enlisted in order to get book material. His squad has the curious distinction of five men who never die or get badly wounded while the replacements drop like flies.