The curious case of movie run time disparities

I’ve noticed lately, specifically on Tubi, that many older films have run times that differ from other sources. Those sources being Wikipedia and IMDB.
For example, The Finnish horror film The Witch (aka Return of the Witch) from 1952 has a runtime of 1 hr 17 minutes, which is different from the 1 hr 20 mins being cited on the sources previously mentioned. Tsui shark’s The Butterfly Murders suffers from a similar disparity in runtime, as it it cited as being 1 hr 28 mins, but Tubi has it as 1 hr 23 mins. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and a few Mizoguchi films have the same issues.
Is it edited? Return of the Witch still had the nudity, so I don’t think that was the issue, unless it was more gratuitous in the original runtime. But what of the others? Does anyone know?

Try looking up the movie in question at IMDB and clicking All Topics then clicking Alternative Versions. Sometimes that explains the different run times.

I don't see why Tubi would be using time compression, but that is one possible explanation.

Also, I don't think the PAL video standard is used anymore, but when it was, well, standard for movies from other continents, it resulted in a 4% speedup (IIRC) when played in NTSC systems.

If neither of those applies here, then who knows?

Time compression might just be the issue here.

I usually attribute these type of things to being slightly different cuts/versions of the film. This seems more likely as an explanation in my mind because of going to 35mm & 16mm screenings of movies that differ slightly from the versions I end up watching on Blu-ray, later at home. Often it seems more of a function of small things (or possibly damaged parts of the print being removed) and less about cutting out things like nudity or violence.

Though I was just googling something else related to Tubi and saw someone claiming on X that Tubi is asking content producers to start editing versions of their movies/etc.
But it's X, so who knows.

I wonder if the time discrepancies is due to portions of the opening and or closing credits being removed.

Ah, there we go. Originally found it embedded in a politically oriented tweet, so I didn't want to share it originally given the forum's policy.


Take it for what it is for now.
I would assume it wouldn't apply to something like Mizoguchi. Though... I know watching The 47 Ronin on criterion, you still get the fascist Japanese government card at the beginning about supporting Japan's war efforts abroad at the beginning (a bit like old US films having the insert of, "buy US war bonds. Support the war," except, you know, it's fascist Japan). I could see that getting cut out of something shown on Tubi.

These are older movies, so I’m not sure if this would apply.