Films that are extremely long (say, three hours plus) tend to be extreme in other ways as well — including the megalomania of their director.
One notorious early example is Erich von Stroheim's 1924 masterpiece "Greed," which originally clocked in at nearly 10 hours. Von Stroheim, notorious for his perfectionism, spent nine months shooting on location, while spending $500,000 — a fabulous sum for the time. His distributor, MGM, later slashed his film to ribbons — prints now in circulation commonly run to two hours and 20 minutes.
Sion Sono's new film, "Ai no Mukidashi" ("Love Exposure"), may have a 237-minute running time, but its length is about all it shares with "Greed" and other classic — and lengthy — folies de grandeur.