Interesting/depressing article by Benjamin Svetkey in the Hollywood Reporter highlighting the fact that there are barely any films on Netflix that are more than 50 years old. As he points out, any number of budding cinéastes and auteurs honed their own aesthetics via the serendipity of late-night TV, a set of happy accidents that may be unavailable to the next generation. I had similar experiences, discovering Wilder, Hitchcock, Buñuel, Astaire/Rogers and 1930s Universal horror thanks to the eccentric generosity of BBC2 (and the absence of much useful competition). Svetkey laments:
Obviously, it’s decided that making and streaming its own content, rather than paying licensing fees for older films, is a more profitable business model. And that’s OK for Netflix. Nobody appointed the streamer guardian of the cinematic temple... But it’s worth noting what’s being lost in the process, as streaming and its cold algorithmic imperatives continue to take over the culture and turn us all into cinematic illiterates.
To be fair, other streaming services such as Amazon Prime offer a rather better selection of films that have the sheer bloody cheek to be old, or black-and-white, or even foreign. But it doesn’t make it that easy to find them, unless you know what you’re looking for, which rather defeats the object, doesn’t it?
PS: And now I realise that when I was watching all those glorious old movies for the first time, most of them were still under 50.
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