reel

reel, in motion pictures, a light circular frame with radial arms and a central axis, originally designed to hold approximately 1,000 feet (300 m) of 35-millimetre motion-picture film. In the early days of motion pictures, each reel ran about 10 minutes, and the length of a picture was indicated by the number of its reels. A film was a “one-reeler,” a “two-reeler,” or longer.

The number of reels in a motion picture became a point of controversy in the United States when the Motion Picture Patents Company (1909–17), a trust of major film producers and distributors who attempted a monopoly of the industry from 1909 to 1912, limited the length of films to one or two reels because the viewing audience was considered incapable of appreciating motion pictures of greater duration. Multiple-reel films achieved widespread acceptance in 1912, however, becoming known thereafter as “feature” films. The word reel has lost its original meaning in terms of time, since a modern projector accommodates reels holding from 2,000 to 3,000 feet of 35-millimetre film, while the so-called mini-theatres often mount an entire movie on a single reel.